Sustainable land use planning in protected rural areas in Italy

Abstract Sustainable land use planning requires an in depth analysis of the existing resources (localization, features, sensitivity to development) and an understanding of development characteristics (resource needs and collateral effects) in order to identify an use for the natural resources that will not prejudice future development. Activities must be developed where the necessary natural resources exist and only when the environment is capable of absorbing the impact of the development. In this context, various methodologies have been developed for determining a rational use of existing resources that anticipates the possible long-term effects on the environment of the decisions taken and that takes into consideration all the existing relations between the natural resources and the planned operations. Some of these methods use the `threshold' concept to establish the limits of the environment's ability to support the planned development. One of these methods is the UET (Ultimate Environmental Threshold), developed and applied during the creation of the Regional Plan for the Tatry National Park with the aim of identifying the environmental thresholds for tourism. The present study is concerned with evaluating the possibility of extending the application of the method to an area, such as the `Parco del Serio' (Italy), characterized by an environment rich in natural features but profoundly modified by human intervention, in order to define a `plan of the environmental preconditions' to be adopted during a sustainable planning process and which indicates the restrictions and the potential for development of human activities (with particular regards to tourism and recreational activities) in relation to the existing environmental resources and the ecological stability of the territory. This application of the UET method made use of the GIS (Geographical Information System) technology for the analysis and processing of the data acquired and the presentation of the results.