Characterizing the fragmentation level of Italian’s National Parks due to transportation infrastructures

In the last decades, due to the population increase and the relative need of new land to cultivate, expand urban centers and develop transportation networks, most of the Italian natural protected areas are subject to different typologies of human pressures that generally cause habitat fragmentation. This process represents a major concern for biodiversity conservation and a key driver of species loss. The main purpose of this paper was to investigate levels of natural habitat fragmentation due to roads and railways networks in the Italian National Parks (INPS) through the use of an Infrastructural Fragmentation Index (IFI). All the operations (geospatial analysis, image classification, and fragmentation analysis) were performed using a Geographic Information System (GIS) software for elaborating a national database. The obtained results include an IFI value for each natural territorial unit inside any INP. Moreover, in order to highlight which are the INPS characterized by higher infrastructural fragmentations, an IFI weighted mean was calculated for each INP. These results represent important indicators for the prioritization of biodiversity conservation interventions and the planning of a INPS sustainable management.