Anthropogenic carbon stocks analysis in sparsely urbanized areas using remote sensing: a case study

Anthropogenic carbon stocks in urbanized areas is a topic of growing importance at both local and regional scale nowadays, but its assessment is subjects to difficulties due to lack of data and spatial heterogeneity of the target. Remote sensing of urban areas has demonstrated its usefulness in assessing phenomena such as soil sealing and surface imperviousness, which are considered to be effective indicators of urbanization. This work presents a preliminary study of mid resolution satellite data capabilities in providing information about anthropogenic carbon stocks over the area of Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. This has been done through a dual approach consisting of: (1) a direct way of deriving a proxy for carbon stocks assessment via imperviousness surfaces mapping and (2) an indirect way of characterizing urbanization patterns by means of land cover classification. Results show interesting correlation pattern between reference anthropogenic carbon-organic carbon ratio values and both imperviousness map (R2 up to 0.63) and urban features cover map (R2 up to 0.75), with more evident matching in correspondence of sparsely urbanized areas.