Land Use and Land Cover Dynamics in a Mediterranean Coastal Wetland: A Remote Sensing Approach

Wetlands are essential blue carbon (BC) ecosystems capable of acting as long-term carbon sinks by storing organic carbon in their sediments. Despite their ecological value, these productive vegetated coastal habitats are increasingly threatened by land use change and anthropogenic pressures, undermining their role in climate change mitigation and ecosystem resilience. This study focuses on the Capo Feto coastal wetland, located in southwestern Sicily (Italy), a Mediterranean ecosystem characterized by a marshy zone surrounded by agricultural and dune systems. The main objective of this study was to generate high-resolution Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) maps from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery across three time points (2016, 2020, 2024), in order to analyse spatial and temporal dynamics over an 8-year period. The resulting maps provide a comprehensive spatial vision of the habitat transformation, identifying areas most at risk of degradation. By integrating remote sensing and GIS-based spatial analysis, this work provides valuable insights to support effective conservation planning and sustainable land management. It also offers initial support for studying the capacity of coastal wetlands as carbon sinks in the process of carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation