1,720,983 research outputs found
Gli indicatori per la stima della vulnerabilità alla land degradation da fattori antropici: strumenti per uan efficace pianificazione territoriale
No full textBeyond Crisis: Demographic Dynamics, Long-term Settlement Patterns, and the Intrinsic Evolution of Local Systems Along a Coastal and Inland Gradient
No full textThis work focuses on population trends recorded at municipal scale in Latium, Central Italy, in the time period between 1871 and 2011. A principal component analysis (PCA) and a cluster analysis were adopted to investigate demographic dynamics concerning specifically the development and the subsequent consolidation of a coastal-inland gradient in population density within the examined area. The main findings of the study indicate the prominence of internal migrations occurred both along elevation (from mountainous to flat areas) and urban (from Rome to countryside) gradients. Population displacement has generated a socioeconomic gap between lowlands featuring intensive agriculture and inner areas featuring depopulation and land abandonment. Peri-urbanization and coastalization of economic activities determined remarkable changes in population density, amplifying traditional divides in the region. Our study demonstrates the role of a multivariate, exploratory approach in the study of regional population dynamics
Official statistics, spatio-temporal dynamics and local-scale monitoring: toward integrated environmental-economic accounting for land degradation
No full textDespite intense efforts, information systems for Land Degradation assessment need extensive research implementation at both regional and country scale. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification identified critical hotspots of land degradation worldwide recognizing the joint action of drivers such as soil depletion, landscape transformations, human pressure, and climate change. Notwithstanding the relevance of this issue, only few country-scale studies have been devoted to analyse long trends over time of land degradation in the specific framework of environmental accounting. While sparse quantitative indicators have been proposed to realize a permanent monitoring of land degradation, a complete official statistical framework (integrating different data sources, in light of a purely environmental accounting perspective) is still lacking. The present study contributes to this deserving issue by proposing the Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) approach as an official statistics framework, quantifying the level of land vulnerability to degradation at a refined spatial scale using biophysical metrics. This monitoring approach allows a comprehensive analysis of changes over time in four components of land degradation (climate, soil, vegetation, and land management) and is integrated with a monetary evaluation of the negative impact of land degradation on income and wealth based on the User Cost Approach (UCA). By developing local-scale, diachronic estimates of land degradation, the ESA-UCA framework provides spatio-temporal outcomes that may constitute the base of environmental reporting and informative systems supporting policy decisions to contain desertification risk
Magnetic susceptibility measurements used for monitoring heavy metals in the industrial area of Tito scalo. Comparison with the results obtained in different industrial areas of Basilicata Region (southern Italy)
No full textIndicators of land degradation vulnerability due to anthropic factors: tools for an efficient planning
No full textLand degradation is one of the most impacting phenomena on natural resource availability, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. In order to provide efficient tools for territorial sustainable management in areas affected by land degradation, it is important to define suitable models and indicators able to identify exposed areas and their vulnerability level, so as to provide an effective support for decision makers in identifying intervention priorities and planning mitigation/adaptation strategies. This work is focused on the evaluation at high spatial detail of land degradation vulnerability due to anthropic factors, which is a crucial issue in areas devoted to farming practices. Vulnerability is evaluated by integrating a new indicator of the mechanization level the authors recently developed, with a set of census based indicators of land management. The new indicator is independent of census data being based on land cover data; thus, it can provide a better spatial characterization and a more frequent updating compared to commonly adopted indices that are evaluated at municipal scale. By analyzing data for the whole Southern Italy, such an indicator was integrated for the first time at full spatial resolution to obtain a final vulnerability index of land management. This comprehensive index enabled a more accurate estimation of the land degradation vulnerability due to anthropic factors allowing the discrimination of priority areas within the municipal areas
Development of environmental indicators for estimating vulnerability to land degradation
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Desertification risk fuels spatial polarization in ‘affected’ and ‘unaffected’ landscapes in Italy
Full text linkSouthern Europe is a hotspot for desertification risk because of the intimate impact of soil deterioration, landscape transformations, rising human pressure, and climate change. In this context, large-scale empirical analyses linking landscape fragmentation with desertification risk assume that increasing levels of land vulnerability to degradation are associated with significant changes in landscape structure. Using a traditional approach of landscape ecology, this study evaluates the spatial structure of a simulated landscape based on different levels of vulnerability to land degradation using 15 metrics calculated at three time points (early-1960s, early-1990s, early-2010s) in Italy. While the (average) level of land vulnerability increased over time almost in all Italian regions, vulnerable landscapes demonstrated to be increasingly fragmented, as far as the number of homogeneous patches and mean patch size are concerned. The spatial balance in affected and unaffected areas—typically observed in the 1960s—was progressively replaced with an intrinsically disordered landscape, and this process was more intense in regions exposed to higher (and increasing) levels of land degradation. The spread of larger land patches exposed to intrinsic degradation brings to important consequences since (1) the rising number of hotspots may increase the probability of local-scale degradation processes, and (2) the buffering effect of neighbouring (unaffected) land can be less effective on bigger hotspots, promoting a downward spiral toward desertification
Urban sprawl: Theory and practice
No full textUrban sprawl is among the most debated topics in the field of urbanism, regional science, ecology, economics, and geography. As this process involves different analysis' dimensions, sprawl is fascinating on the one side, but quite difficult to investigate on the other side. Having the objective to review the nature, dynamics, and consequences that low-density urban expansion is having on biophysical environments, this contribution provides a brief picture on the relationship between urban sprawl and environment quality with a focus on Europe. It is assumed that environmental change and urban transitions are progressively threatening peri-urban and rural landscape leading to worse socio-ecological conditions hard to manage with traditional planning instruments. Literature supports the idea that environmental policy and spatial planning should cope more effectively with the increasing vulnerability of “sprawling” urban regions to natural hazards
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