Assessing conservation status on coastal dunes: A multiscale approach

Coastal dune systems are particularly fragile and threatened environments, which, however, providefundamental ecosystem services to nearby urban areas acting for example as protective buffers againsterosion. Correctly assessing their conservation status is a priority in order to manage them adequately andto plan urban development in coastal regions. In this paper we propose a practical multiscale method forthe assessment of the conservation status of sandy coastal environment. The proposed method is articulatedin two stages, one focusing on the landscape and the other on the plant community level. In the firstphase mosaic structure and composition of the coastal landscape are analyzed using a series of indicators:natural coastal surface, richness of land cover typologies, landscape diversity and eveness, numberand average size of habitat patches, and mean shape index. At a detailed scale, floristic, vegetational andstructural aspects of the dune plant communities are analyzed along the main environmental gradient bymeasuring: spatial connectivity and richness of boundaries, species diversity, eveness and chorologicalindex. In this work we apply and test the method in an experimental area on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy(Latium region), comparing the conservation status of two study sites.