Dear Colleagues,

The landscape has undergone accelerated and strong changes due to anthropic pressures. Urbanization and urban sprawl as well as the spread of industrial and tertiary activities, in conjunction with intensification of agricultural activities, have generated new types of landscape. This growing phenomenon, which is throwing the traditional management of agricultural systems into crisis, must be accompanied by a recognition and classification of the new types of landscapes to avoid abandonment, under-utilization, and pollution that can cause a progressive depletion of ecosystems.

Rural areas are generally underestimated by governments, which consider them only in terms of exploitation of natural resources and of economic profits. Nevertheless, they are essential for climate change mitigation, local identity implementation, balancing of population territorial distribution (avoiding overpopulation of cities), ecosystem service provisions, and support of circular economy development. Furthermore, the contingency of the COVID-19 crisis is also highlighting a new role for rural areas, thanks to the increase of teleworking and of our appreciation for green spaces as a consequence to the significant changes to society. The need to establish a new vision of “the future of rural areas and the place they should have in our society” represents the new challenge, both in the scientific and governmental field.

Many studies are devoted to rural contexts and their characteristics, focusing on rural buildings, land use change analysis or construction of scenarios/alternatives, or in terms of ecosystem service assessment, etc., as support to planning activities. Specific reflections should be made about the need to develop “integrated” methods and approaches (involving different skills and with a multiscale and multitemporal base), considering that rural areas, in these terms, have been less studied than other contexts (urban areas, industrial or tertiary districts).

This Special Issue intends to spark a scientific debate on new integrated methodologies for land use/cover analysis and prediction, new declination of rural area types or features, as well as the use of environmental indicators.

Papers on, but not limited to, the following topics are welcome:

• Hybrid geographies (marginal lands and territories in between);
• The role of rural areas towards mitigation of climate change;
• Land use change prediction models;
• Land use change studies based on historical cartography;
• Evaluation of ecosystem services to support land use changes;
• Decision support in the localization of blue and green infrastructures;
• Circular economy processes applied to rural production;
• COVID-19 implications for agricultural activities.

Prof. Dr. Stefania Pindozzi
Dr. Elena Cervelli
Guest Editors

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• Land use/Cover change
• Land cover classification
• Ecosystem services
• Vernacular architecture
• Environmental impact assessment
• Local identity
• Hybrid geographies