Territorial knowledge management for green infrastructures aimed at conservation of environmental continuity. A study on Italian National Parks

On the ecological network functional structure, the National Parks undoubtedly represent core areas that play a key role on the biodiversity conservation strategies. The Italian National Parks system is characterized by the historic settlements presence, which represents a territorial peculiarity. On the one hand, this characteristic contributed to maintaining an enormous wealth of biodiversity and landscapes while, on the other hand, it strongly quickened the anthropic disturbance with certainly not negligible effects on the ecological connectivity. The years of intensive urban growth coincide in Italy with a period of almost stasis environmental legislation condition. Furthermore, the land planning penalized both by a lack of strategic vision and by the absence of a clear planning and programming framework. The main aim of this work is to highlight the conditions of presence of high pressures (derived to urban and infrastructural systems) and high environmental values by directional proximity analysis. It will be implemented a new effective indicator to highlight conflicts between the phenomena of urbanization and ecological values still present. This approach could permit to address the land planning future choices both at territorial and local scale in a perspective biodiversity conservation and mitigation of the anthropogenic impact on the National protected areas system.