Remote Sensing Applied to Dynamic Landscape: Seventy Years of Change Along the Southern Adriatic Coast

Coastal landscapes are complex socio-ecological systems that undergo rapid transformations driven by both natural dynamics and human pressures. Their sustainable management depends on robust, cost-effective remote sensing methodologies for long-term monitoring and quantitative assessment of spatiotemporal change. In this study, we developed an integrated remote-sensing-based framework that combines historical aerial photograph interpretation, transition matrix analysis, and machine learning to assess coastal dune landscape dynamics over a seventy-year period. Georeferenced orthorectified and preprocessed aerial imagery freely available from the Italian Ministry of the Environment for the years 1954, 1986, and Google Satellite Images for 2022 were used to generate detailed land-cover maps, enabling the analysis of two temporal intervals (1954–1986 and 1986–2022). Transition matrices quantified land-cover conversions and identified sixteen dynamic processes, while a Random Forest (RF) classifier, optimized through parameter tuning and cross-validation, modeled and compared landscape dynamics within protected Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites and adjacent unprotected areas. Model performance was evaluated using Balanced Accuracy (BA) to ensure robustness and to interpret the relative importance of change-driving variables. The RF model achieved high accuracy in distinguishing change processes inside and outside LTER sites, effectively capturing subtle yet ecologically relevant transitions. Results reveal non-random, contrasting landscape trajectories between management regimes: protected sites tend toward naturalization, whereas unprotected sites exhibit persistent urban influence. Overall, this research demonstrates the potential of integrating multi-temporal remote sensing, spatial statistics, and machine learning as a scalable and transferable framework for long-term coastal landscape monitoring and conservation planning.