Vulnerability to land degradation in Mediterranean Europe increased substantially in the last decades because of the latent interplay of climate and land-use change, progressive soil deterioration, and rising human pressure. The present study provides a quantitative evaluation of the intrinsic change over time in the level of vulnerability to land degradation over a representative Mediterranean area (Italy) using a normative indicator, the percentage of land classified as 'critical' in total area. This indicator derives from a spatially explicit elaboration of the ESA (Environmental Sensitive Area) Index (ESAI), a standard methodology of land classification considering different levels of vulnerability to degradation at a particularly refined spatial scale (1 km2). This indicator was calculated over a relatively long time interval (1960-2010) and aggregated at the geographical scale of administrative regions in Italy, a relevant domain in the implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) to combat desertification and the adoption of individual Regional Action Plans (RAP). A significant - but spatially heterogeneous - increase in 'critical' land was observed in Italy, leading to distinctive dynamics in northern/central regions and southern regions. Climate aridity and anthropogenic pressure leveraged the sudden vulnerability in some marginal land of Northern Italy - a region classified as unexposed to desertification risk - paralleling the levels observed in some districts of Southern Italy, an 'affected' region to desertification risk. These results suggest a re-thinking of mitigation policies proposed in the Italian NAP and a redesign of the RAPs toward place-specific adaptation measures, especially in the 'less exposed' Northern Italian region.

Department of Agricultural and Forest Science University of Tuscia Via S Camillo De Lellis snc 01100 Viterbo Italy

Department of Agriculture University of Udine Via del Cotonificio 114 33100 Udine Italy

Department of Mathematics Computer Science and Economics University of Basilicata Viale dell'Ateneo Lucano 85100 Potenza Italy

Department of Methods and Models for Economics Territory and Finance Faculty of Economics Sapienza University of Rome Via del Castro Laurenziano 9 00161 Rome Italy

Global Change Research Institute CAS Lipova 9 37005 Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic

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