## 2 Materials and Methods
### The Study Area  
The study area boundaries were delimited based on the availability of historical maps, with the aim of including areas with both urban and extra-urban land use types. Specifically, the work focuses on an area that begins on the outer limits of the Vesuvius National Park, which includes the areas closest to the cone, which are not directly urbanized ad are inserted in a context of strong anthropization (the metropolitan area of Naples includes three million of inhabitants). For the purposes of the study, it was considered useful to include in the study area the entire territory of the 13 municipalities belonging to the park in order to allow for the assessment of the context of rural and man-made dynamics. A further step was necessary when it came to defining the area under study due to the availability of historical data and maps: Sheet 185 IV-SW (S. Giuseppe Vesuviano), belonging to the old 1906 series, is not available from the Geographic Military Institute (GMI) archives. The need to make a comparison between different temporal steps forced us to remove the part of the territory of the Ottaviano and Somma Vesuviana municipalities belonging to the missing sheet.  
The final study area extends to 19,565 ha (Figure 2). The altitude ranges from sea level to 1275 m.a.s.l. The study area includes the still active \"Somma-Vesuvius\" volcanic complex, the most important volcano in continental Europe. The archive/database of the historical eruptions of Vesuvius [20] is very interesting for the purposes of this work, as it allowed us to relate LUCC with geogenic factors. The database reports as many as 13 eruptions between 1817 and 1907, which justify the spatial extent of the areas covered by ashes. In particular, the eruption of 1906 is known as the most violent manifestation of the activity of Vesuvius in the 1900s. There were only two eruptions between 1907 and 1960, but the 1944 one was particularly violent, with ashes that reached the Adriatic side of the Peninsula.  
Figure 1: The framework.  
From the naturalistic point of view, the two sides, the Vesuvian side and that of the Somma Mountain, respectively, are different: the Vesuvian side is more arid and is largely refereed to prevent landslides, presenting the typical vegetation of Mediterranean scrub. The Somma Mountain is wetter and is characterized by the presence of mixed woods.  
The 13 municipalities have a population of 310,531 inhabitants (2011 census data). Analysis of the population trend over the whole last two centuries shows a general increase in inhabitants, with a higher rate during the period of 1911-1961 (Figure 3).  
Since World War II, the surrounding areas of the National Park have seen progressive landscape saturation due to the building of new infrastructure and industrial settlements as a consequence of urban growth.  
Nevertheless, since the establishment of the Vesuvius National Park in 1995, the natural protected area has had a rich historical and naturalistic heritage, with an agricultural production that is unique in its variety and originality of flavours. The main agri-food  
Figure 3: Resident population growth from 1861 to 2011; ISTAT Census data of 1861, 1911, 1961, 2011.  
Figure 2: The study area based on a 2005 Regional Topographic Map.  
products, also underlined by quality food certifications, have their strengths in wine, apricots and tomatoes.