1,720,965 research outputs found
Identificazione e caratterizzazione di aree agricole ad elevato valore naturalistico in territorio pre.Appenninico.
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Complementary Approaches to Planning a Restored Coastal Wetland and Assessing the Role of Agriculture and Biodiversity: An Applied Case Study in Southern Italy
No full textThe European Parliament has recently passed the “Nature Recovery” law to restore degraded ecosystems and prevent natural disasters as part of its “Biodiversity Strategy 2030” and “Green Deal”. In this respect, wetlands can provide a wide range of ecosystem services such as biodiversity conservation, hydrological land protection, provision of products, cultural and recreational benefits, and many others. However, they are still threatened by the expansion of agricultural land, overexploitation of water resources, water pollution, climate change, etc. Wetland conservation, however, is essential and requires coordinated action by managers, policymakers, stakeholders, and scientists. A systemic planning and design process is required to address these complex challenges.
This research aims to outline an integrated, comprehensive, and well-structured lanning framework for wetland systems that can be applied to different wetland types, in line with institutional wetland policy, governance, and management. The methodological approach developed in this study aims to integrate a longer-term strategy plan with a shorter-term action plan by combining the Yeomans scale of permanence and the Driver–Pressure–State–Impact–Response model. This innovative approach was applied to a specific case study and may guide further wetland planning in the future. The
Nominal Group Technique was used, a consensus method aimed at achieving a general agreement and convergence of opinion. An expert group of seven members with different technical backgrounds was engaged and expert consultation was found to be a simple and rapid technique for carrying out wetland planning. The expert judgements were sound, consistent, and did not overlap (i.e., were not redundant). “Pressures” and “Impacts” were identified by the experts and clustered according to corresponding “States” and “Drivers”. Expert scoring allowed the resulting “Responses” to be
ranked in terms of their relevance and influence on the development of the wetland strategy and action plan, while a priority order for their implementation was assessed according to the Yeomans scale of permanence. Agriculture was the highest rated ‘Driver’; similarly, Biodiversity (habitats and species) was the ‘State’ with the highest score. Therefore, their combination (agriculture and biodiversity) should be considered as the strategic cornerstone of the whole planning framework.
This means designing and implementing a system in which agriculture and nature (in our case a wetland) are allied ecological systems in mutual compensation, according to the way natural elements are embedded in the agricultural system. A collection of factsheets containing the full list of responses considered in theWetlands Action Plan, with detailed operational actions, is provided in the Appendixe
Agricultural “greening” and cropland diversification trends: Potential contribution of agroenergy crops in Capitanata (South Italy).
Full text linkCropland diversity was the focus of this work to support regional policy in a land planning perspective for the
development of both the agriculture and renewable energy sectors. Considering the Capitanata region (South of
Italy) as a case study, the land share-out in agricultural crops have been assessed by using two different approaches: a) multi-year census data and b) land use/land cover digital maps through GIS assisted techniques. In
the first case, the smallest land unit was the administrative municipality while in the second, it was the cell of a
grid having a regular sized mesh (3 km) superimposed to the digital map. The share of the cultivated surfaces
among the main crop categories was computed with reference to the region as a whole and its geographical subregions, the latter statistically determined according to the main characters in their crop composition.
Thereafter, the Shannon ’s Diversity Index was applied to the crop share of cultivated areas. Finally, a potential
scenario of possible land use changes due to the introduction of energy crops was presented, according to defined
land conversion criteria, in order to improve the crop spatial diversity, particularly in those sub-regions where
lower diversity levels were previously detected.
An attempt in describing and explaining the dynamic traits of cropland diversity was performed. The essential
elements resulting from the analysis were: 1) The stronger the environmental constraints, the narrower is the
crop choice and the consequent crop diversity. 2) By eliminating the link between support payments and production, the EU-CAP “decoupling ” scheme had positive effects in terms of cropland diversity. Further reinforcing
effects are probably expected by strengthening the CAP rural development and the agro-environmental measures. The “greening ” scheme applied in the last CAP programming period (2014 –2020) is probably acting in the
same direction. 3) Through a simulated new planning scenario, a limited but well-targeted agroenergy land
conversion may produce a significant improvement in cropland diversity even though not necessarily translated
in a lower environmental burden due to agriculture, at least immediately.
Diversification is the sign of a progressive reorientation of agriculture towards a multifunctional activity that
combines producing quality food, maintaining rural livelihoods and landscapes, promoting environmental
stewardship, preserving biodiversity, establishing a better agro-ecosystem functioning. In this respect, the scope
of the work was to provide a planning case study at regional scale in order to promote a reconciling approach
between productive and ecological services of agriculture, coming from a diversified and multifunctional agricultural system made of both food- and energy-crops
Agricultural land use and optimization of the ecological network pattern: the Apulian “Monti Dauni Meridionali” case study
No full text10th Congress of the European Society for Agronomy “MULTI-FUNCTIONAL AGRICULTURE Agriculture as a Resource for Energy and Environmental Preservation”, 15-19 September 2008, Bologna, Italy. Italian Journal of Agronomy/Rivista di Agronomia
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Riconoscere i sistemi agricoli come ecosistemi: elementi descrittivi di valutazione
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