Habitat Patch Diversity Evaluation for Sustainability: a Case Study of a Rural Area in Central Italy

Abstract

Landscape analysis is regarded as a new tool for monitoring and judging land use patterns in terms of sustainability of human activity systems at local level. A case study of evaluation for sustainability based on habitat patch diversity in an ecoregion of Central Italy is presented. In this region, ongoing land use patterns reflect both historical adaptation to local environmental constraints and positive, social-oriented management. More protective land use patterns are mostly widespread in fragile physiographic conditions like those of the mountain areas, where woodland, shrub, and grassland patches are larger and cover more than 90% of the land. This situation is regarded as a positive outcome of the traditional public ownership regime, because public lands amount to more than 70% in the mountain areas. The hilly areas, where public property drops to 28%, presents landscape metrics showing a well balanced situation between agricultural land use and protective native woods and grasslands, which provides a finegrained and harmonious Mediterranean landscape. In the low-land areas, with anthropic pressure and more favourable conditions for crop productivity, there is much more agricultural land, even if some mitigation in terms of biodiversity maintenance is offered by the presence of hedgerow ecotones. In these areas, landscape analysis is not able to supply meaningful information about cropping system design and practices which can maintain a sustainable level of soil fertility and quality of natural resources and processes, and further analysis at cropping system level should be carried out

Rurality and agroecosystem sustainability: a case study at farm-field level in Terceira Island (Portugal) and in Viterbo Province (Italy)

“…Recently, when facing new problems of increasing risks for human health and the environment, and due to the recent development of conventional agriculture, the European agricultural policy has been promoting new models of sustainable agriculture that have their roots in the principles of both traditional agriculture and the modern science of agroecology 41 – 43 . Therefore, it is essential to promote a greater use of sustainability indicators in policy and management decision-making processes 34 translating into practice the use of ASIs, also in order to be able to assess their real validity.…”

Protection of a Landscape Park’s Area in The Spatial Extent of Impact of the Poznan Agglomeration, Midwestern Poland

“…Difficulties in the proper management of landscape parks result from the need to take into account the unique characteristics of each protected area, as well as the diversity of local conditions and factors affecting development (Ervin, 2003;Brown et al, 2005;Southworth et al, 2006;Skokanová, Eremiášová, 2013). As there is no single pattern of conduct that could be applied in each landscape park, more research is needed in identifying the functioning of local agricultural and ecosystems (Hayes, 2006;Stockdale, Barker, 2009;Mancinelli et al, 2010;Navarro-Cerrillo et al, 2013;Rosa et al, 2013). Another important group of research issues is problems and conflicts, very frequently occurring in the areas and buffer zones of the parks as a consequence of reconciling conservation and economic functions in the same area (DeFries et al, 2010;Hernik et al, 2013).…”