A utilização de um GIS para o monitoramento das sensibilidades ambientais na planície e no fundo da val da província de Forlì-Cesena (Italia)

Geographical Information Systems have proved to be since years, with extremely significant results, among the most common and efficient tools for territorial planning activities. There are several applications and fields in which GIS have been used, among these the studies on environmental impact assessment and environmental sensibilities of the territory are of great importance. The present work has been carried out within the Agrieco Project, financed by the Forlì-Cesena province and the Emilia-Romagna region, whose aim, in its first phase, is to guide a group of enterprises of the agro-alimentary supply chain to obtain the certification of their environmental management systems according to the EMAS II or ISO 14001 standards. A study on environmental sensibility has been carried out to single out the more sensible áreas towards some of the more important factors of environmental pressure. The use of a GIS allowed superimposing the information concerning the studied área and thus drawing updated indications on the environmental situation. The aim was essentially to determinate, through the superimposition of information layers such as slopes, pedology and land use, the loss of soil due to erosive phenomena. The study has had a potential character but gives anyhow useful indications to plan interventions on the territory. The environmental receptors that form the used layers have been carefully evaluated and a weight quantifying the receptor’s relevance towards the erosive phenomenon has been given to each receptor using the AHP method (Analytic Hierarchy Process). The superimposition of the information through an overlay process has given a thematic map with the distribution of the territory’s potential erosion.