Ecosystem services and land use planning. towards a framework to design green infrastructures

Abstract

The raising attention to Ecosystem Services mapping becomes a key element aimed to increase the ecological and economic assessment of planning during decision-making processes. Nonetheless, even if the biophysical assessment of Ecosystem Services reached great results, it remains less explored how to bridge the gap that separates analysis from a project. The land use plan is the product of a long-term interaction between stakeholders and Public Administrations involved in a decision-making process, and often the technological models aimed to visualize the spatial distribution of environmental data do not match the needs of “simple” outputs to reach “complex” solutions. Concerning Ecosystem Services, it has been studied that Green Infrastructures design seems to be a feasible output derived from a highly specialized analytical skill aimed to support territorial projects for land use management. In the paper, a methodology of Green Infrastructure design is proposed, given a spatial distribution of different Ecosystem Services.