Multi-temporal analysis of ecosystem integrity in coastal dunes

摘要: Coastal dunes are transitional systems which offer manifold ecosystem services, including material and intangible benefits, whose relevance for human society has been little investigated to date. In order to plan for a sustainable use of these threatened ecosystems, proper indicators to quantify ecological services and functions over time should be provided. Since the functionality of coastal dunes is affected by the specific contiguity among different dune habitat patches, in this study we propose the use of landscape integrity, expressed by the number and length of boundary types among the aforementioned habitats, as an ecosystem functionality indicator. In particular, we aim at properly expressing the trend of coastal dune mosaic integrity in two Italian LTER sites over the last sixty years by applying a generalized diversity function on the number and length of boundary types. Such functions, unlike a traditional …