A complex index of landscape fragmentation: an application to Italian regional planning

Indicators of landscape fragmentation are various. They are designed to capture the effects brought by a single specific determinant of the pulverization of the landscape in smaller and more isolated habitat patches. So, the infrastructural fragmentation index considers the effect of transport and mobility infrastructures, the urban fragmentation index the outcomes of human settlements and the effective mesh size the number and extension of the patches. In this paper, we investigate on the design of a unique index, namely the composite index of landscape fragmentation (CILF), which can reflect simultaneously the effect of those three determinants. CILF is obtained as a linear combination of the three indices and applied to the assessment of landscape fragmentation of the so-called internal landscape units prepared (and not approved yet), in the frameworkof the Regional Landscape Plan of Sardinia, Italy. The indication of the CILF are powerful, as they allow politicians and decision-makers to understand to which landscape units de-fragmentation policies should be addressed first.