Integrating landscape fragmentation and adaptation to climate changes in spatial planning tools: the case of the Tirso water basin (Sardinia)

In the last decades, there have been many contributions on the interplay between biodiversity (species and ecosystem richness), landscape fragmentation (progressive division of large habitats into many smaller and more isolated patches), and adaptation to climate changes (capacity to adapt to sudden and unexpected events). In some circumstances, the increase in landscape fragmentation may lead to a decrease in biodiversity, due to the association of higher impediment to movement and smaller home range. In some cases, landscape fragmentation can be associated with a lower capacity to adapt. Studies on the integration into spatial planning practice of the consideration, analysis and measurement of landscape fragmentation are still rare. In this work, we scrutinize spatial planning tools with respect to the attitude to the integration of concepts, methods and policies related to landscape fragmentation and adaptation to climate changes. We consider multilevel planning tools (natural parks, Network 2000 sites, etc.) regulating a wide area spanning north-east to south-west over the water basin of Tirso, the longest river of Sardinia, Italy. We found that the plans describe landscape fragmentation or adaptation to climate changes mostly in qualitative terms, while they do not propose any measurement tools. As a relevant example, the plan of regional natural park of Tepilora is the only tool proposing indicators available in the literature for quantifying landscape fragmentation and considering explicitly mitigation and adaptation to climate changes.