Surface water loss hotspots and areas of human pressure in Italy

In Italy, surface water bodies are the main source of water withdrawals. However, growing human pressures are significantly changing surface water availability, gradually reducing its extent.

We analyze the influence of human activities on surface water losses occurred in Italy between 1984 and 2021. To do so, we identify three areas of human pressure, i.e., regions of human activities that heavily rely on the use of surface water:

Irrigated area (IRR);

Built-up area (BUP), indicating areas of human settlements (urban and industrial areas);

Anthropogenic area (ANT), indicating areas of either irrigation practices or human settlements.

Here, we provide the datasets describing the spatial distribution of surface water loss (SWL), irrigated areas, built-up areas, and anthropogenic areas, and the land cover classification for 2021 across Italy (LC). Such datasets have been derived from remotely-sensed products. In particular, the location of SWL is determined using the Transitions layer of the Global Surface Water dataset (Pekel et al., 2016), whereas the maps of irrigated and built-up areas are obtained from the Corine Land Cover (CLC) 2018 dataset (EEA, 2018). Finally, the land cover map is extracted from the ESA WorldCover map (version 2) for the year 2021 (Zanaga et al., 2022).

In the map of SWL, irrigated areas, built-up areas, and anthropogenic areas the value 1 indicates the presence of SWL or irrigated area or built-up area or anthropogenic area, respectively. The 2021 land cover map follows the classification system of the ESA WorldCover map (11 classes).

References:

Pekel, JF.; Cottam, A.; Gorelick, N.; Belward, A.S. (2016). High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes. Nature, 540, 418–422.

European Union, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service 2018, European Environment Agency (EEA).

Zanaga, D.; Van De Kerchove, R.; Daems, D.; De Keersmaecker, W.; Brockmann, C.; Kirches, G.; Wevers, J.; Cartus, O.; Santoro, M.; Fritz, S.; Lesiv, M.; Herold, M.; Tsendbazar, N.E.; Xu, P.; Ramoino, F.; Arino, O. ESA WorldCover 10 m 2021 v200, 2022.