## 3 Results and Discussions  
The applied techniques, which integrate manual and semi-automatic mapping, enabled accurate mapping of the plastics in the year 2017 (Figure 5). From a first qualitative assessment, the distribution of APSs within the municipal territories has been delimited exclusively to the part closest to the coast and flat. From analysis of the elaborations summarized in Table 2, it emerges that about 2000 hectares of APS are concentrated in the four municipalities of Pisticci, Policoro, Scanzano Jonico, and Bernalda. At the overall level, the APSs occupy 2.25% of the total study area, that is, a 4.43 % of the total agricultural area. Since the complete classification of land cover has not been carried out, a different dataset [35] has been used only to make a descriptive statistical comparison for a general evaluation. For an analysis of the frequency distribution of the single plastic covers, a histogram (Figure 6) was realized automatically in a GIS environment, showing how the single patches of identified plastic covers are distributed. From the analysis, it emerges that most of them do not exceed 10 hectares and that the largest number of polygons identifying plastic are in the first class of distribution (less than 1 ha). These data, at the planning level, show that there is not high spatial continuity in the APSs, and the total area is distributed mainly on small agricultural plots. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l r r r r r r} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Municipality**} & \multirow{2}{*}{
\begin{tabular}{c} **Municipality** \\ **Area (ha)** \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{**APS (ha)**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Agricultural**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**\% Compared to**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**\% Compared to**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**\% Compared to**} \\  & & & **Area (ha)** 1 ** & **Total APS** & **Municipality** & **Agricultural** \\ \hline Pisticci & 23,143.70 & 346.44 & 12,558.35 & 16.80 & 1.50 & 2.76 \\ Nova Siri & 5225.47 & 28.30 & 2321.14 & 1.37 & 0.12 & 0.23 \\ Policoro & 6700.44 & 394.67 & 3982.14 & 19.14 & 1.71 & 3.14 \\ Tursi & 15,846.90 & 173.91 & 5357.13 & 8.43 & 0.75 & 1.38 \\ Montalbano Jonico & 13,472.34 & 19.71 & 5618.17 & 0.96 & 0.09 & 0.16 \\ Rotondella & 7599.95 & 59.65 & 3554.27 & 2.89 & 0.26 & 0.47 \\ Bernalda & 12,495.67 & 598.33 & 8086.09 & 29.01 & 2.59 & 4.76 \\ Scanzano Jonico & 7174.62 & 441.23 & 5122.80 & 21.40 & 1.91 & 3.51 \\ \hline Total & 91,632.09 & 2062.23 & 46,600.10 & 100.00 & 2.25 & 4.43 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: APS quantities (ha) and percentage incidence for each municipality in the study area. However, for a more precise analysis of the distribution of the quantity of APS present in the study area, the interpolation of the APS within the hexagonal grid made it possible to identify the areas with the greatest APS concentration. The aps concentration within cells was divided into percentage classes with a maximum value found of 75%. From this methodology of analysis (Figure 7), it is clear that the distribution within municipalities is different because the APSs are distributed exclusively in the portions closer to the coast and flat. Figure 5: APS map for the study area. Figure 6: Histogram of the distribution of APS polygons. The quantitative analysis of the grid (Table 3) confirms what has been indicated above, i.e., mainly the APSs cover at most 30% of the cells, while only in 4% of the cases there are very relevant aggregates in terms of continuous extension. The GIS methodologies applied in this work enabled quantification, for the first time, of the plastic surfaces used in agriculture in Basilicata Region, where there are not yet strategies of action and continuous monitoring. The density of area affected by plastics is lower than in other Mediterranean agricultures [40; 41]. In consideration of the new obligations imposed to EU Member States on waste management, regional and/or local authorities will also have to implement strategies to reduce APW.