Massaciuccoli Lake basin - Cartographic Comparison of Spatial Analysis Methodologies for Ecosystem Risk Assessment

This geographic collection presents a cartographic comparison of three spatial analysis methodologies—Overlap, Multi K-means clustering, and Multi K-means applied to Variational Autoencoder (VAE) outputs—aimed at identifying the Risk of forest and grassland habitat degradation and the associated biodiversity loss. The analysis integrates a set of environmental and socio-ecological variables considered critical for ecosystem risk evaluation, including: Land imperviousness density change Tree cover density Tree cover density change Grassland extent Grassland change Land use and cover Natura 2000 (classes: 1120 Industrial, commercial and military units; 1310 Mineral extraction, dump and construction sites; 8120 Highly modified watercourses and canals) Plant phenology index (total productivity) Temperature (average absolute change) Potential evapotranspiration (relative change) Precipitation (cumulative relative change) Number of species (cumulative) Land use and cover change (Detailed references for the variables are provided in the links in the Related Works section.) The comparison framework was implemented in a QGIS project, structured according to the WGS84 EPSG:4326 coordinate reference system. The project is organized into three main groups of layers: Original variables – containing the spatial datasets of the raw variables. Reclassified and inverted variables – including CSV datasets of variables reclassified and, when appropriate, inverted according to their ecological significance. Risk of forest and grassland habitat degradation and biodiversity loss – comprising the outputs of the three methodologies, the corresponding heatmaps of risk hotspots, and the comparative assessments across methods.