Strengthening a regional green infrastructure through improved multifunctionality and connectedness: Policy suggestions from Sardinia, Italy

A wide body of research in the latest years has studied either green infrastructures as providers of multiple ecosystem services, especially at the urban level, or ecological corridors and the issue of connectivity between landscape patches in the face of growing fragmentation. However, not many studies have analyzed how the two concepts can be combined to ground evidence-based policy and planning recommendations. In this study, a methodological approach for such combination is proposed: after mapping a regional green infrastructure building upon the assessment of multiple ecosystem services, and a network of ecological corridors through resistance to movement of species, the two spatial layouts are combined so as to analyze correlations between the potential provision of ecosystem services and the resistance to movement. The methodology is applied in the case of the island of Sardinia, whose self-containment makes it possible to discard potential effects from surrounding areas, hence facilitating the implementation of the model. The outcomes of the regression model point out to three ecosystem services as the most important factors that should be targeted by appropriate spatial policies, if connectivity is to be increased: regulation of micro and local climate, forestry productivity, and cultural identity and heritage values.