Multifractal Analysis of MODIS Terra Satellite Time Series of Italian Urban Forests

Abstract

Urban forests can improve the environmental quality of urban areas increasing their sustainability and contributing to reduce the effects of natural and anthropogenic hazards, like climate change, hydrogeological hazards, heat waves, acoustic and atmospheric pollution. Therefore, identifying any disturbance, which could affect vegetation, represents an important task within the framework of urban forest monitoring. Among the causes of plant diseases and loss of biodiversity, pathogenic bacteria have been documented as severely impacting vegetation status, as in the case of Toumeyella parvicornis, an alien species prevalent from southern Canada to northern Mexico, that has been detected for the first time in Europe at the end of 2014, in Campania (Italy) on Pinus pinea, in the urban area of Naples [1], and now spreading in Southern Italy, where it could have devastating effects. It is well known that remote sensing is an effective means for monitoring the status of forests, thanks to the availability of advanced sensors that make possible to capture in advance trends of vegetation degradation [2]. In particular, remote sensing could be used to detect pre-visual stages of the plant infection, thus preventing the epidemic spread by infected but asymptomatic trees. In work we study six forests located in different of Castel Castel