Ecological restoration priorities in an ecological network framework

The purpose deals with the implementation and first application of a model aiming to recognize ecological restoration priorities in an ecological network framework. The geodatabase sources used were: Master Plan and information provided by Land Reclamation Consortiums; floristic surveys; real and historical aerialphotographs and field surveys. First, we grouped the data sources to make only one grid theme concerning land use, then we selected, from the floristic geodatabase, two functional groups that we sup- posed to form metapopulations and to be subjected to isolation and rarefaction: forest and wet area plant species. We mapped all the meadows and we considered them as potential sources of meadow plant species. We assigned to every land use types, for every functional group, a roughness value (their power to limit plants dispersal and colonization, ranging 1-10). We calculated, adopting ten classes, Euclidean distance from the population of the selected plant species, identified from the floristic geodatabase. Final- ly, we calculated the impermeability (the product between roughness and distance, weighting the first 0.7, the second 0.3). We extracted the priority cells (2 m x 2 m) from cells whose impermeability was less than 8, those that were within public accessible properties and within 500 m from cultural rural an- thropic elements (old farmhouses, pumping stations, capitals). The results were the precise mapping of the areas where is most probable a colonization of the three functional groups of plant species, together with effective possibility to access and with rural cultural interest. Further researches could deal with the addition of other variables to the model.