Time Series of Land Cover Mappings Can Allow the Evaluation of Grassland Protection Actions Estimated by Sustainable Development Goal 15.1.2 Indicator: The Case of Murgia Alta Protected Area

Protected areas, or national parks, are established to preserve natural ecosystems; theireffectiveness on the territory needs to be evaluated. We propose considering a time series of theSDG 15.1.2 indicator, "Proportion of important sites for terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity thatare covered by protected areas, by ecosystem type", to quantify the presence over time of grasslandecosystem in Murgia Alta (southern Italy), within the Natura 2000 and national park boundaries.Time series of remote sensing imagery, freely available, were considered for extracting, by SupportVector Machine classifiers, a time series of grassland cover mappings from 1990 to 2021. This latterwas, then, used for computing a time series of the SDG 15.1.2 indicator. A high reduction (about15,000 ha) of grassland presence from 1990 to 2004, the foundation years of the national park, followedby the increasing stability up to nowadays, was evaluated. Furthermore, grassland presencewas evaluated in a 5-km buffer area, surrounding Natura 2000 boundary, revealing a continuousloss from 1990 up to now (about 500 ha) in the absence of protection actions. This study representsthe first long-term analysis for the grassland ecosystem in Murgia Alta and the first effort to analyzea time series of the SDG 15.1.2 indicator. The findings can provide inputs to governments in monitoringthe effectiveness of protection actions.