Characterizing historical transformation trajectories of the forest landscape in Rome's metropolitan area (Italy) for effective planning of sustainability goals

With the aim at developing a landscape dynamics framework for environmental planning and management and testing the effectiveness of protected areas in achieving the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations sustainability goals, we characterized the historical transformation trajectories of forest area changes from 1936 to 2010 in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital (Italy). Remote sensing-based products coupled with landscape pattern metrics and fragmentation analysis have been implemented, comparing different historical forest maps. The results show a remarkable forest area gain – from 17.6% to 25.5% – thanks to 68,299 ha of recently established forest. Statistical descriptors showed that the highest relative gain occurred in mountain zones, confirming a wide European forest recovery pattern in marginal areas from past deforestation and overexploitation. Deforestation mainly occurred in the flat and hilly areas where almost 26,000 ha of forests were lost since 1936. In summary, two main forest landscape dynamics were reconstructed: (I) the increase of forest cover fragmentation in the lowland areas; and (II) the rise in the forest area in the interior sectors of the mountain landscape, mainly within protected areas. Restoring the forest ecosystem's bioecological integrity has been highlighted as an urgent action for biodiversity conservation and carbon mitigation. In lowland areas, the study revealed the urgent need to establish new protected areas and rewilding spaces as landscape metrics are relatively below the sustainability targets for healthy forest ecosystems. The proposed framework can be used for testing the effectiveness of environmental planning and management in other forest landscapes to achieve the Agenda 2030 goals.