INTEGRATION OF VEGETATIONAL AND MULTITEMPORAL ANALYSIS: A CASE STUDY IN THE ABANDONED MINE DISTRICT OF MONTEVECCHIO (SOUTH-WESTERN SARDINIA)

Abstract

In this paper the authors analyse the land cover transformation in the mine district of Montevecchio, through the integration of vegetational and multitemporal landscape analysis. For this purpose, three important dates (1955, 1977, 2000) of the district history have been considered and two different periods are analysed (1955-1977 and 1977-2000). Multitemporal analysis was carried out through the study of aerial photographs which resulted in the production of three 1:10.000 land cover maps. Vegetational data were obtained through the phytosociological study of the area. The results show the evolution of the natural vegetation as general trend in the territory. Particular analysis was carried out on the mining areas (mining dumps, surface mines and tailing dams) to understand how much and how have been re-colonized by the native vegetation. For the mining dumps the main transformations are towards the mediterranean maquis, the garrigue and the corkoak woods. The surface mines was stable in the first period for 73.6% and the main changes are due to the diffusion of natural vegetation (e.g. to mediterranean maquis 14.7%). With regard to the tailing dams we observed an increase of stability (from 81.6% to 96.1%) together with a global increase of surface from 1955 to 2000. Therefore, the integration of the multitemporal and the vegetational analysis made possible to register a significant evolution of the vegetation cover on incoherent and polluted materials in relatively short times.