Monitoring the coastal wetlands dynamics in Northeast Italy from 1984 to 2016

Abstract

The Adriatic coast of Northeast Italy is one of the representative areas holding high ecological value in the Mediterranean. In this research, we have monitored the environmental change of coastal wetland in ten studied sites that covered all the Ramsar sites and most of the natural reserves in Northeast Italy from 1984 to 2016. The results show that the coastal wetland environment has been changing associated with a multitude of influential factors, including economic development, reserve initiatives, and sea-level rise, which have been quantitively analyzed for each of the studied wetland sites. The results of the analysis confirm that (1) with robust reservation policy, the landuse of the coastal wetland sites remained generally stable despite the continuous anthropogenic disturbance; (2) wetlands located in the insular area with low elevation are subject to more severe impact from sea-level rise inundation; (3) the continental coastal wetlands in reserve area show the polarization phenomenon which is strengthened by strict reservation policy and contiguous aggressive anthropogenic activities. To protect the insular coastal wetlands and reduce the polarization effects on continental coastal wetlands, more efficient measures should be taken to strengthen and implement the existing reservation directives and regulations actively.

Keywords

• Coastal wetland
• Remote sensing
• Landuse
• Natural reserve
• Sea-level rise