Urban green infrastructure (UGI) is a network composed of natural and semi-natural areas, such as greenspaces, open areas, and water bodies, designed to enhance the provision of ecosystem services and to meet the needs and expectations of local communities. UGIs should be accessible and should improve the well-being and health of their users, protect and enhance biodiversity, and allow for the enjoyment of natural resources. The study proposes a methodological approach to defining a UGI, conceived as a network of areas connected by urban ecological corridors and suitable for providing climate regulation, flood risk mitigation, outdoor recreation, and biodiversity and habitat quality enhancement. The methodology is applied to the functional urban area (FUA) of the City of Cagliari, Italy. The analysis results show that areas with high values of climate regulation, carbon storage and sequestration, and habitat quality enhancement are particularly suitable to be part of a UGI. Although values for outdoor recreation appear to be less significant, the provision of this service is particularly relevant within the Cagliari FUA. However, areas characterized by high values of flood risk mitigation show a different behavior, which highlights how the presence of impermeable surface within urban areas is associated with a loss of patch connectivity.

A wide body of research in recent years has studied either green infrastructures as providers of multiple ecosystem services, especially at the urban level, or ecological corridors and the issue of connectivity between landscape patches in the face of growing fragmentation. However, not many studies have analyzed how the two concepts can be combined to ground evidence-based policy and planning recommendations. In this study, a methodological approach for such a combination is proposed: after mapping a regional green infrastructure building upon the assessment of multiple ecosystem services and a network of ecological corridors through the resistance to movement of species, the two spatial layouts are combined so as to analyze correlations between the potential provision of ecosystem services and the resistance to movement. The methodology is applied in the case of the island of Sardinia, whose self-containment makes it possible to discard potential effects from surrounding areas, hence facilitating the implementation of the model. The outcomes of the regression model point out three ecosystem services as the most important factors that should be targeted by appropriate spatial policies if connectivity is to be increased: regulation of micro and local climate, forestry productivity, and cultural identity and heritage values.

According to the European Commission, green infrastructure and spatial connectivity concerning the provision of ecosystem services are strictly related to the conceptual category of ecological networks. In particular, regional and urban planning processes should adequately manage, improve and monitor the effectiveness of green infrastructures as ecological networks which provide ecosystem services and the spatial connectivity of such systems. Building on a methodological approach defined in previous studies, this article aims at identifying ecological corridors through a least-cost path model with reference to the spatial layout of a set of protected areas. Moreover, such a methodological approach is implemented in the context of the Sardinian region to map ecological corridors, which form, together with protected areas, a network representing the spatial framework of regional green infrastructure. Finally, the study discusses the relation between ecological corridors and the spatial taxonomy of the landscape components featured by environmental relevance, identified by the Regional Landscape Plan, through multiple linear regression analysis, in order to assess if, and to what extent, the present regional spatial zoning code can be used as a basis to implement regulations aimed at protecting ecological corridors. This methodological approach is relevant to defining planning policies and measures to strengthen the operational capacity and effectiveness of regional networks of protected areas through the protection and the improvement of the spatial framework of ecological corridors.

Ecosystem Services (ESs) are assuming a constantly increasing importance in management practices due to their key role in ensuring a sustainable future to fauna and flora on Earth. In addition, ES degradation and quality loss jeopardize current human activities. For this reason, it is essential to develop methodologies and practices able to efficiently assess environmental and socio-economic impacts in terms of ES deterioration, especially within protected areas. Norms and regulations have to be able to identify habitat and species categories to be preserved, and to determine the cost of their destruction and decline, according to a holistic vision, which includes social and economic impacts, besides the environmental ones. The paper illustrates the case study of the “Isola dell’Asinara” Marine Protected Area (MPA) in Sardinia, where an experimental methodology was developed with the aim to draw new regulations that integrate conservation measures of Natura 2000 sites included in its territory, provisions determined by the integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) protocol and the Standardized Actions for Effective Management of MPAs (ISEA) project. Subsequently, in order to assess the status of ESs and impacts on ESs located within the MPA territory, an ecosystem-based approach was implemented and applied to the actions defined for the new regulation proposal. Results show that regulations are in this way valuably enriched by environmental aspects of the MPA that would otherwise be overlooked.

Land take and soil sealing imply land cover transitions that may possibly result in decreased capacity to resist landslides; hence, this study focuses on the relations between land-taking processes and landslide hazard by addressing the following research question: “To what extent do land-taking processes increase landslide hazard?” The impact of land take is assessed through a regression model which relates the level of landslide hazard to a set of land cover variables which include artificialized land; that is, land taken up through urbanization processes, and a set of covariates that represent land cover types grouped in accordance with the LEAC (land and ecosystem accounting) classification. This methodological approach is implemented into the spatial context of Sardinia, an insular Italian region, and shows that not only the amount of taken up artificialized land, but also other types of land covers, are likely to increase the magnitude of landslide hazard. A set of implications concerning planning policies related to land cover and land cover transitions are discussed in the concluding section, where policy recommendations are identified in order to mitigate the impacts of land cover transitions on landslide hazards.