In Italy quarrying causes relevant environmental damages and alterations to the land and the ecosystems. Despite the present Italian legislation requiring the restoration of the sites after exploitation, most of the quarries, both the abandoned and the still operational ones, are not restored. The objective of this work is to indicate a monitoring methodology in order to survey the present state of the quarry sites and their evolution in time, which are the basic data needed to implement an adequate land reclamation project. Such methodology has been applied to several abandoned limestone quarries in the Latina province (close to Rome), characterised by a typical Mediterranean vegetation, but it can be applied to any other kind of litology and vegetation. The land monitoring has been realised both by using remote sensing techniques, supported by a Geographic Information System of the studied area, and by in situ surveying. The in situ surveying was able to assess the capability of the remote sensing model to describe the state of each site. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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