nature - sustainability - GIS ... open minded: Les Dolomites - an open GIS view on a World Heritage site

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.

The Alpine Convention, an international treaty between the Alpine Countries (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Slovenia and Switzerland) as well as the EU for the sustainable development and protection of the Alps, had a working group UNESCO world heritage.

In June 2009 UNESCO listed the Dolomites as a World Heritage Site for the aesthetic value of its landscape and for the scientific importance of its geology and geomorphology.

Nine so called systems within the World Heritage Site:

Pelmo, Croda da Lago
Marmolada
Pale di San Martino, San Lucano, Dolomiti Bellunesi, Vette Feltrine
Dolomiti Friulane and d’Oltre Piave
Dolomiti settentrionali
Puez-Odle
Sciliar-Catinaccio, Latemar
Bletterbach
Dolomiti di Brenta

It's worth to visit them in nature!

The free and open pieces:

ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (ASTER GDEM)
Perimeter of the Alpine Convention - GIS data
ProtectedPlanet - the online interface for the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), a join project of IUCN and UNEP
GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library
GRASS GIS (new with winGRASS 64bit binaries in the upcoming 7.0.3 release !!!)

Download ASTER GDEM tiles freely from e.g. EarthExplorer and build a VRT from a list of the tiles by gdalbuildvrt.

# GDAL
gdalbuildvrt asterv2.vrt -input_file_list aster_file_list.txt

Import the VRT into GRASS GIS.

# GRASS GIS
r.in.gdal input=asterv2.vrt output=asterv2

Go to the ProtectedPlanet website and search for Italy to download the GIS data of italian protected areas; then search for Dolomites to get the related WDPA ID.

# GRASS GIS - import GIS data of protected area with WDPA ID 478641 (Dolomites)
v.in.ogr input=WDPA_Jan2016_ITA-shapefile-polygons.shp layer=WDPA_Jan2016_ITA-shapefile-polygons output=world_heritage_site_les_dolomites where=WDPA_PID=478641

Import and reproject the Alpine Convention perimeter:

# GRASS GIS - reproject from EPSG 3035 while importing in a EPSG 4326 (WGS84) location
v.import input=AC-perimeter_ifuplan_16072007.shp output=world_heritage_site_les_dolomites epsg=3035

And then enjoy open data of a world heritage site and open GIS.