Complexity in action: Untangling latent relationships between land quality, economic structures and socio-spatial patterns in Italy

Land quality, a key economic capital supporting local development, is affected by biophysical and anthropogenic factors. Taken as a relevant attribute of economic systems, land quality has shaped the territorial organization of any given region influencing localization of agriculture, industry and settlements. In regions with long-established human-landscape interactions, such as the Mediterranean basin, land quality has determined social disparities and polarization in the use of land, reflecting the action of geographical gradients based on elevation and population density. The present study investigates latent relationships within a large set of indicators profiling local communities and land quality on a fine-grained resolution scale in Italy with the aim to assess the potential impact of land quality on the regional socioeconomic structure. The importance of land quality gradients in the socioeconomic configuration of urban and rural regions was verified analyzing the distribution of 149 socioeconomic and environmental indicators organized in 5 themes and 17 research dimensions. Agriculture, income, education and labour market variables discriminate areas with high land quality from areas with low land quality. While differential land quality in peri-urban areas may reflect conflicts between competing actors, moderate (or low) quality of land in rural districts is associated with depopulation, land abandonment, subsidence agriculture, unemployment and low educational levels. We conclude that the socioeconomic profile of local communities has been influenced by land quality in a different way along urban-rural gradients. Policies integrating environmental and socioeconomic measures are required to consider land quality as a pivotal target for sustainable development. Regional planning will benefit from an in-depth understanding of place-specific relationships between local communities and the environment

Diffusione urbana e cambiamento climatico: percorsi di (in)sostenibilità a livello locale?

Le città sono gli insediamenti umani più vulnerabili agli impatti del clima. Nelle aree urbane il cambiamento climatico è esacerbato da regimi termometrici più netti e precipitazioni più intense rispetto ad aree rurali o extraurbane. Ciò è dovuto all’influenza che forme e strutture urbane esercitano sul clima locale, accentuando le onde di calore e modificando i regimi delle precipitazio-ni temporalesche. In particolare, i modelli insediativi della città ‘diffusa’ rendono ‘urbani’ spazi precedentemente rurali, con un elevato grado di frammentazione abitativa e infrastrutturazione del territorio. Ciò implica costi rilevanti di funzionamento relativi a consumi energetici, impermeabiliz-zazione del suolo, aumento della domanda di trasporti, inquinamento. Questo può accrescere la vul-nerabilità urbana agli impatti del cambiamento climatico. Il contributo ha lo scopo di esplorare al-cuni effetti potenziali che la crescita urbana esercita sul bilancio termico e sul clima alla scala urba-na. Lo studio si sofferma dapprima su alcuni concetti base per lo studio del clima urbano. Successi-vamente, si descrivono gli effetti potenziali della forma urbana diffusa sull’aumento di temperatura e sulle precipitazioni estreme lungo il gradiente urbano. Infine, il lavoro discute sulla necessità di utilizzare metodologie di analisi meteo-climatiche specifiche per il clima urbano e di predisporre strategie di adattamento urbano al cambiamento climatico.Among human settlements, cities are the most vulnerable to climate impacts. In urban areas, climate change is exacerbated by sharper thermal regimes and heavier rainfall compared to suburban or rural areas. This is due to the influence urban forms and structures have on local climate, aggravating the heat waves and modifying the rainfall patterns. in particular, the settlement models of the ‘sprawling’ city change into ‘urban’ some originally rural areas, with a high degree of housing and infrastructure fragmentation . This implies increasing operation costs related to energy consumption, soil sealing, arising transport demand and pollution. This can increase the urban vul-nerability to the impacts of climate change. The paper aims at exploring some of the potential ef-fects urban growth exerts on thermal balance and climate at the urban scale. Initially, the paper re-ports a few basic concepts for the study of urban climate. Then, it describes the potential effects of the sprawling urban form on temperature rise and extreme rainfall along the urban-rural gradient. Finally, it discusses the need to use techniques of weather and climate analysis specific for urban climate and to develop strategies of urban adaptation to climate change

a cost effective approach for improving the quality of soil sealing change detection from landsat imagery

The aim of this study is to develop a cost-effective approach for soil sealing change detection integrating radiometric analysis, multi-resolution segmentation and object-based classifiers in two study areas in Italy: Campania region and Veneto region. The integrated approach uses multi-temporal satellite images and CORINE Land Cover (CLC) maps. A good overall accuracy was obtained for the soil sealing maps produced. The results show an improvement in terms of size of the minimum mapping unit and of the changed object (1,44 ha in both cases) in respect to the CLC. The approach proves to be cost-effective given the data which are provided at low or no cost and as well as the level of automation achievable

Economic Convergence with Divergence in Environmental Quality? Desertification Risk and the Economic Structure of a Mediterranean Country (1960-2010)

The present study investigates the relationship between land vulnerability to desertification and the evolution of the productive structure in Italy during the last fifty years (1960-2010). The objectives of the study are two-fold: (i) to present and discuss an original analysis of the income-environment relationship in an economic-convergent and environmental-divergent country and (ii) to evaluate the impact of the (changing) productive structure and selected socio-demographic characteristics on the level of land vulnerability. The econometric analysis indicates that the relationship between per capita GDP and land vulnerability across Italian provinces is completely reverted once we move from a cross section analysis to panel estimates. While economic and environmental disparities between provinces go in the same direction, with richer provinces having a better land, over time the growth process increases the desertification risk, with the economic structure acting as a significant variable

Climate Aridity under Changing Conditions and Implications for the Agricultural Sector: Italy as a Case Study

A comprehensive diachronic analysis (1951–2010) of precipitation and temperature regimes has been carried out at the national and regional scale in Italy to investigate the impact of climate aridity on the agricultural system. Trends in climate aridity have been also analysed using UNEP aridity index which is the ratio between rainfall and potential evapotranspiration on a yearly basis. During the examined time period, and particularly in the most recent years, a gradual reduction in rainfall and growing temperatures have been observed which have further widened the gap between precipitation amounts and water demand in agriculture

Preliminary study on the influence of the geographical origin and farming system on ‘Nero dei Nebrodi’ pig using chemical and isotopic fingerprinting

In this study, the geographical origin of longissimus dorsi meat from ’Nero dei Nebrodi’ pigs reared in two distinct regions of north-eastern Sicily was indagated by correlating chemical-nutritional parameters, stable isotope composition, fatty acid and sterol profiles, and mineral element content. Significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) be tween the ’Nebrodi group’ (NG) and the ’External Nebrodi group’ (ENG) were found for 51 over 80 variables. The δ2 H, δ18O, δ13C and δ15N of the defatted meat were statistically different (p<0.01) between NG and ENG animals, indicating a change in the composition of the diet and drinking water consumed. The results showed that the characteristic rich endemic vegetation of the Nebrodi influences not only the chemical-nutritional pa rameters of the meat but also its isotopic ratios, allowing for a geographical characterization required for the traceability of this peculiar product, aspiring to a protected designation of origi

A note on comonotonicity and positivity of the control components of decoupled quadratic FBSDE

In this small note we are concerned with the solution of Forward-Backward Stochastic Differential Equations (FBSDE) with drivers that grow quadratically in the control component (quadratic growth FBSDE or qgFBSDE). The main theorem is a comparison result that allows comparing componentwise the signs of the control processes of two different qgFBSDE. As a byproduct one obtains conditions that allow establishing the positivity of the control process.Comment: accepted for publicatio

Exploring forest infrastructures equipment through multivariate analysis: complementarities, gaps and overlaps in the Mediterranean basin

The countries of the Mediterranean basin face several challenges regarding the sustainability of forest ecosystems and the delivery of crucial goods and services that they provide in a context of rapid global changes. Advancing scientific knowledge and foresting innovation is essential to ensure the sustainable management of Mediterranean forests and maximize the potential role of their unique goods and services in building a knowledge-based bioeconomy in the region. In this context, the European project FORESTERRA ("Enhancing FOrest RESearch in the MediTERRAnean through improved coordination and integration”) aims at reinforcing the scientific cooperation on Mediterranean forests through an ambitious transnational framework in order to reduce the existing research fragmentation and maximize the effectiveness of forest research activities. Within the FORESTERRA project framework, this work analyzed the infrastructures equipment of the Mediterranean countries belonging to the project Consortium. According to the European Commission, research infrastructures are facilities, resources and services that are used by the scientific communities to conduct research and foster innovation. To the best of our knowledge, the equipment and availability of infrastructures, in terms of experimental sites, research facilities and databases, have only rarely been explored. The aim of this paper was hence to identify complementarities, gaps and overlaps among the different forest research institutes in order to create a scientific network, optimize the resources and trigger collaborations

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe