Dry‐stone wall agricultural terraces are widespread all over the world and represent an effective retaining structure for farming purposes. However, dry‐stone walls can be subjected to degradation and damages, with complex and expensive maintenance. Such high costs are the most relevant drivers of land abandonment in many agricultural areas of Europe and of other continents, resulting in a progressive loss of cultivable surface, cultural heritages, and landscape traditional elements. Therefore, a more effective and efficient management of these systems is needed. As a contribution, in the present paper, an innovative modelling approach system is proposed. The presented model is able to describe hydrological processes on a terraced slope and to analyze the destabilizing pressures acting on the retaining dry‐stone walls in the most critical portion of each terrace. The model structure is based on the results of multidisciplinary field monitoring campaigns on water circulation in terraced landscapes carried out on a terraced vineyard (Lamole, Tuscany, Italy). A monitoring station was set up on a recently reconstructed dry‐stone wall, to measure the parameters influencing the pressures acting on the retaining structure. The results show a good capability of the model to predict the distribution and intensity of stresses on the instrumented dry‐stone wall over time and space. Such stresses were related to the earth pressure and to hydrostatic pressures (water accumulation), without the occurrence of soil saturation. Detecting the most failure‐prone portions of a terraced system, this approach can support landowners and land planners in managing these complex and fragile environments.

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This study aims to check the compatibility of a selection of waste and recycled biopolymers for rammed earth applications in order to replace the more common cement-based stabilization. Five formulations of stabilized rammed earth were prepared with different biopolymers: lignin sulfonate, tannin, sheep wool fibers, citrus pomace and grape-seed flour. The microstructure of the different formulations was characterized by investigating the interactions between earth and stabilizers through mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP), nitrogen soprtion isotherm, powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The unconfined compressive strength (UCS) was also evaluated for all stabilized specimens. Three out of five biopolymers were considered suitable as rammed earth stabilizers. The use of wool increased the UCS by 6%, probably thanks to the combined effect of the length of the fibers and the roughness of their surfaces, which gives a contribution in binding clay particles higher than citrus and grape-seed flour. Lignin sulfonate and tannin increased the UCS by 38% and 13%, respectively, suggesting the additives’ ability to fill pores, coat soil grains and form aggregates; this capability is confirmed by the reduction in the specific surface area and the pore volume in the nano- and micropore zones.

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