The dataset constitutes a mosaic, created by Arpa Piemonte, of false color images obtained as elaborations of original data from the Sentinel 2A satellite (European Copernicus programme). The images are suitably mosaiced to cover the Piedmont, Liguria and Aosta Valley territories according to a series of 12 tiles. Each image constitutes a composition of three seasonal vegetation indices (NDVI - Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) superimposed in the three channels of the RGB monitor: spring 2020, summer 2020 and autumn 2019. The NDVI is an index based on the reflectance measurements acquired in the regions spectral ranges of red and near infrared and is strongly correlated with the chlorophyll content and, if measured over time, with the phenological cycle of plants. The superimposition of the seasonal NDVIs makes it possible to differentiate the areas for which there are one or more vegetative cycles or in any case variations in the land cover (variously colored areas) from those in which the soil is completely devoid of vegetation or with permanent water (shades of gray to black). The elaboration was carried out by Arpa Piemonte as part of the activities connected to the national project of Monitoring of Soil Consumption 2020 conducted by the National System for Environmental Protection (SNPA) through the coordination of ISPRA and the involvement of various regional agencies. The project aims to monitor the transformations of the territory due to urban, infrastructural, commercial expansions, etc. with the consequent loss of natural, agricultural and semi-natural soil, understood as an essential and fundamentally non-renewable environmental resource. The analysis methodology uses, for the first time on a national scale in a unitary and homogeneous way, the new Sentinel 2A/B images which, given their level of detail and the frequency of revisiting guaranteed by the Sentinel mission, allow to obtain visions of whole of the national territory in a periodic and constant manner (multi-temporal analysis). The comparison between these allows us to highlight the main transformations of the territory and the related phenomena of land consumption (expansion of urban settlements, new roads, shipbuilding for new works, etc. ).
