Information on land cover is necessary for correct planning of land use and preservation. Data regarding land use and cover are used in a number of domains in public administration and scientific research.

The Consortium has developed a new methodology for surveying changes in land use and cover in the region of Tuscany, using a historic analysis performed on high-resolution aerial photographs and satellite images. This analysis makes it possible to rapidly determine historic variations in agricultural crops and in the urban fabric in Tuscany from the end of the 1970s onward. In particular, digital images of Tuscany were taken from the region's photographic archives for the years 1978, 1996 and 2007.

Methodology: The study is based on unaligned systematic sampling of points arranged according to a random grid; each point in the grid is associated with a category of land use, in line with Corine Land Cover - level 3 specifications (table).

The research has been carried out for the entire region of Tuscany, creating a multitemporal classification of permanent survey points, based on orthorectified aerial photos, leading to an objective estimation of the average rate of expansion of urban areas between 1978 and 2007, with an intermediate control in 1996.