The geographical information system and the natural resources management

Abstract

The Geographical Information System (GIS) works on databases that contain different kinds of information (town-planning, geographical and environmental). It is able to correlate, to integrate and to consult them just using simple or complex inquiries allowing in any moment the introduction of new data or the updating of those available. The management of the natural resources well it is lent to be done through the creation of a GIS : natural resources are connected to the punctual knowledge of the territory but have to be referred to lots of other factors, primarily linked to human activities, that contributes to organize and transform them. It is needed a suitable cartography containing the basic dates and the general subjects to overlap to the whole other series of information, different for origin and contents. The aim is to represent the natural and human structure of the territory, to know the spontaneous or induced events, to manage the norms and to plan the existing resources: from the integration of all the information it is created an adding value. A concrete example of this statement is represented by a project, in course of elaboration, promoted by the province of Rome for the Realization of an Ecological Network in the mountainous complex of the Lucretili-Simbruini-Ruffi. The study area is situated in the centre of Italy and more precisely in Lazio region throw the border with Abruzzo. The location of this place makes it to be a key element in the environmental continuity at territorial scale, therefore the study of the same one will be made analysing more levels, beginning from the landscape, in its components natural and human, continuing with the definition of the functional ecological network, and concluding with the aspects of managerial nature, that more than the others will receive advantages from the creation of the GIS. There are essential elements able to suggest guidelines for planning and maintaining with ecological criteria: it means to verify the planning instruments, to point out the areas with different kind of constraints and to analyze the incongruities and the conflict points that will become the most important in the new action-plan.