Nuovi strumenti per lo studio del paesaggio agrario: il Telerilevamento

The paper is aimed at showing how remote sensing methods can be useful to the study of agrarian landscapes. As it is well known, remote sensing is a relatively new ground investigation methodology. Because of the artificial satellite fast and continuous technical developments, nowadays it is very frequently used in Earth studies and in mapping production and updating. In particular, it can be successfully used in order to evaluate the agricultural areas, both quantitatively and qualitatively. By changing the researcher point of view (bird eye view), remote sensing can be added to the traditional landscape study methods, based on field investigation. In this paper satellite images are processed in order to recognize the different crops. Remote sensing methods will never replace the traditional agricultural landscape studies. But they can be used to give a preliminary assessment of the cultivated surfaces. By studying an historical series of satellite images it is then possible to describe the evolution of land cover through the time and this may be an initial step towards the study of landscape evolution