Spatial Rule-Based Assessment of Habitat Potential to Predict Impact of Land Use Changes on Biodiversity at Municipal Scale Rocco Scolozzi • Davide Geneletti Received: 28 August 2009 / Accepted: 31 December 2010 / Published online: 28 January 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract In human dominated landscapes, ecosystems are under increasing pressures caused by urbanization and infrastructure development. In Alpine valleys remnant natural areas are increasingly affected by habitat frag- mentation and loss. In these contexts, there is a growing risk of local extinction for wildlife populations; hence assessing the consequences on biodiversity of proposed land use changes is extremely important. The article pre- sents a methodology to assess the impacts of land use changes on target species at a local scale. The approach relies on the application of ecological profiles of target species for habitat potential (HP) assessment, using high resolution GIS-data within a multiple level framework. The HP, in this framework, is based on a species-specific assessment of the suitability of a site, as well of sur- rounding areas. This assessment is performed through spatial rules, structured as sets of queries on landscape objects. We show that by considering spatial dependencies in habitat assessment it is possible to perform better quantification of impacts of local-level land use changes on habitats. Keywords Habitat suitability  Urban planning  Alpine valley  Land-use change  Ecological impact assessment  GIS Introduction The assessment of biodiversity impact due to land-use changes is pivotal to the achievement of an environmen- tally sustainable territorial development (Opdam and others 2001, 2003). Land use changes affect habitats by interfer- ing with all three components of biodiversity: its compo- sition, its structure in time and space and the functions sustaining it (Jingan and others 2005; Noss 1990). Addi- tionally, extensive literature indicates that the persistence of species populations in a landscape chiefly depends on the size, the spatial configuration (connectivity) and the quality of habitats (e.g., Gentile and De Bernardi 2004; Hanski and Beverton 1994; Verboom and others 2001). Therefore, environmental assessments aiming at preventing biodiversity impacts should consider all these different biodiversity components. Spatial planning aiming at sus- tainable landscapes should identify and maintain or restore the spatial pattern of ecosystems that may support popu- lations of targeted species which can be identified as bio- diversity surrogates (Opdam and van den Brink 2007). Consideration of both the amount and configuration of habitats is one of the most important issues that need to be considered in developing approaches to landscape conser- vation (Lindenmayer and others 2007). In Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) applications, structural simplification of ecosystems and disruption of ecological processes are often not fully acknowledged as meaningful impacts. According to Mandelik and others (2005) and Geneletti (2006), biodiversity treatment within R. Scolozzi (&) Department of Agro-Ecosystems Sustainability and Bioresources, IASMA Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Via E. Mach, 1 S. Michele all’Adige, Trento 38060, Italy e-mail: rocco.scolozzi@iasma.it D. Geneletti Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Trento, Trento, Italy D. Geneletti Center for International Development, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA 123 Environmental Management (2011) 47:368–383 DOI 10.1007/s00267-011-9613-8