Mapping Italy's Sacred Natural Sites to Support the Establishment of Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs)

Abstract

Aim

Sacred natural sites (SNS) are culturally governed places that often retain remnants of natural vegetation, safeguard species of conservation concern and maintain landscape continuity, positioning them as potential Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs). Despite increasing ecological interest, national datasets remain unavailable, limiting reproducibility of studies and preventing systematic evaluation of SNS as OECMs. Here we release the first harmonised, openly accessible, geospatial inventory of SNS in Italy, comprising 2332 records, explicitly designed to support their assessment as potential OECMs at the national scale. The dataset provides detailed information on the types of SNS, their ecological attributes and their landscape context, offering a valuable resource for biodiversity conservation, enabling systematic evaluation of SNS within conservation planning applications, as well as research in biogeography, landscape ecology and biocultural science.

Location

Italy.

Feature

SNS of Catholic tradition (e.g., shrines, hermitages, monasteries, chapels, pilgrimage sites, groves, springs).

Methods

The dataset derives from a standardised nationwide identification protocol combining documentary sources, remote-sensing geolocation and land cover filtering to identify sites embedded within natural or semi-natural landscapes. We provide a georeferenced point vector dataset, with each point representing the location of an SNS. For each site, we report geographic coordinates, elevation, bioclimatic variables, proximity to road infrastructure, surrounding land cover composition and indicators of formal protection status.

Results

The dataset contains 2332 georeferenced SNS distributed across Italy, mainly concentrated in central and northern regions. Only a small proportion of SNS occur within protected areas (17%), with the greatest proportion corresponding to sites lacking an assigned IUCN category (38%). SNS are predominantly situated at low- to mid-elevations (mean = 458 m, SD = 343 m) and in landscapes dominated by agricultural (45%) and natural land covers (38%). Their climatic space overlaps with, but extends beyond, that encompassed by the protected area network, indicating potential complementarity in conservation representation.

Main Conclusions

This dataset represents the first standardised and policy-relevant national resource for assessing SNS as potential OECMs, providing a useful baseline for their integration into conservation planning and contributing to the global target of protection (i.e., 30% coverage by 2030) in Italy—a country that still lacking official OECMs. While our analytical framework is transferable, its application depends on the availability of comparable national datasets and may require adaptation to local ecological, cultural and institutional contexts.