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Исследование ландшафтов всегда было традиционным научным направлением географии. В России подобная направленность исследований остаётся актуальной, несмотря на то, что термины «геоэкология» и «ландшафтная экология» сегодня более распространены в англоязычном научном сообществе. Наш краткий обзор показывает значительное ускорение антропогенных ландшафтных изменений в Европе, Центральной Азии и азиатской части России за последние пять десятилетий. Ландшафтные исследования в антропоцене должны быть направлены на достижение и сохранение устойчивости ландшафта при его высокой производительности, что включает в себя прекращение деградации ландшафтов, развитие культурных и сохранение природных ландшафтов. Чистая вода и чистый воздух, плодородные и здоровые почвы для производства продуктов питания и других экосистемных услуг, а также биологически разнообразная зеленая среда являются атрибутами ландшафтов, обеспечивающих выживание и благополучие населения. Дисциплинарные и междисциплинарные исследования должны генерировать знания, инновации и правила принятия действенных решений. Генерация знаний в глобализованном мире основана на сборе больших массивов данных и моделировании сценариев. Международные длительные полевые опыты и системы агроэкологического мониторинга будут предоставлять данные для экосистемных моделей и систем поддержки принимаемых решений. Landscape research has been a traditional scientific discipline of geography. This is still the case in Russia, whilst the terms geo-ecology and landscape ecology have become established in the English speaking scientific community. Our short review reveals huge and accelerating anthropogenic landscape transformations in Europe, Central Asia and Asian Russia since the end the 1960s. Landscape research in the Anthropocene has to focus on achieving landscape sustainability at high productivity. This includes halting landscape degradation, developing cultural landscapes, and maintaining semi-natural landscapes. Clean water and air, fertile and healthy soils for food and other ecosystem services and a green and bio-diverse environment are attributes of landscapes for the survival and well-being of humans. Research has to generate knowledge, innovations and decision rules by disciplinary, interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary work. Knowledge generation in a globalized world is based on big data gathering and scenario modelling. International long-term experiments and agri-environmental monitoring systems will deliver data for ecosystem models and decision support systems.

Earth observation (EO) data are useful tools to analyse geomorphological processes, among which slow-moving landslides triggered by rainfall. EO data are also used to evaluate climate change and to assess its impact on geomorphological processes and geo-hydrological phenomena. The latter is the topic of the Project OT4Clima (Innovative Earth Observation technologies to study Climate Change and its impact on the environment) joined by CNR-IRPI within a consortium that includes other CNR institutes, universities and private companies. The OT4CLIMA project moves from the awareness that the impacts of climate change on the environment need to be better observed, understood, and modelled, especially at a regional scale, in order to put in place appropriate and effective risk mitigation strategies. Within the project, the CNR-IRPI group works on the development of rigorous methods and procedures for evaluating the impact of climate and its change on landslides, in particular on those characterized by a slow cinematic, at a regional scale. The test site is represented by four catchments located in the Basilicata region, southern Italy, namely the basins of the Bradano, Basento, Agri, and Sinni rivers. Long-term rainfall series gathered from 22 rain gauges located in the four catchments are analysed to evaluate the presence of temporal trends. To this aim, non-parametric and statistical tests are applied to the series. Historical landslide information is gathered from the analysis of the IFFI (Inventario dei Fenomeni Franosi in Italia) database, the Idrogeo platform (https://idrogeo.isprambiente.it/app/) and the AVI (Aree Vulnerate in Italia) catalogue. Only some types of landslide movements are considered, namely rotational-translational slides, slow slides/flows, complex movements. Moreover, Copernicus Sentinel-1 images are employed to detect the spatial and temporal distribution of slow earth surface deformations. The obtained results are used for checking the completeness of the landslide inventories. More in detail, the deformation maps of the test site are obtained by means of the application of the SBAS (Small BAseline Subset) technique to three datasets of Sentinel-1 images: t146 ascending orbit and t51 and t124 descending orbits, for the period 2015-2020. Then, a comparative analysis of rainfall data with displacement series is carried out with the aim of identifying clusters of satellite measurements with homogeneous behaviour likely correlated to variations in the rainfall regime. In particular, only the points with a mean velocity in the observation higher than 0.1 cm/year are considered to be moving. Moreover, only the displacement series of points located in areas mapped as landslides - as for the historical inventories - and sited within the influence regions of each rain gauge in the study area are analysed. A 10-km circular buffer centred in the stations are used to define the influence region of each station. The displacement series are analysed and compared to the rainfall series to search for correlations and to evaluate the effects of climate drivers on slow moving landslides.

Recent extreme weather events have resulted in an ongoing discussion on the issues of land use and compensation payments within Austrian agriculture. Building on a functional evaluation system for agricultural lands as developed within the Interreg IIIB project “ILUP”, the national project “Agriculture and Flooding” has as its goal to classify the flood-protection contribution and flood sensitivity of agricultural lands. This, in turn, enables the recommendation of targeted measures for potentially improving flood situations, as well as an estimate of their implementation costs. In addition to the digital soil map, other fundamental sources used for the project are the digital flood risk map, IACS land-use data and works by the Institute for Land and Water Management Research. Reference values and marginal returns sourced from the Federal Institute of Agricultural Economics also flow into the cost estimates for the recommended combination. The results will contribute to an understanding of the multifunctionality of agricultural lands and to the setting of priorities on a regional scale regarding packaged flood-prevention and damage-minimization. However, the results at hand can only serve as one step toward regional flood protection projects, whose development will require the cooperation of all interest groups.

Der prognostizierte Klimawandel wird auch den Wasserkreislauf beeinflussen. Das Ausmaß dieser Änderung frühzeitig zu bestimmen ist eine wichtige Aufgabe, da sie Grundlage notwendiger Entscheidungen ist. Dieses Ausmaß hängt allerdings stark von der Datenlage und den Methoden ab, mit denen an diese Aufgabe herangegangen wird. Selbst wenn die derzeit verwendeten Methoden stimmige Ergebnisse für den gegenwärtigen Klimazustand liefern, kann nicht davon ausgegangen werden, dass die mit diesen Methoden berechneten Ergebnisse auch für ein geändertes Klima Gültigkeit haben werden. Die Unsicherheiten der Vorhersagen sind teils meteorologischer, teils hydrologischer Herkunft. Während die Unsicherheiten der GCMs bereits bekannt und in der Diskussion sind, wurden die in diesem Kontext existierenden Probleme der hydrologischen Modelle bisher nur selten untersucht. Insbesondere die Unsicherheit in der Prozessbeschreibung innerhalb der hydrologischen Modelle muss genauer geprüft werden. In dieser Dissertation wurden verschiedene Beschreibungen des Evapotranspirationsprozesses (ET) untersucht, denn dieser Prozess wird durch den Klimawandel stark beeinflusst werden. Neun verschiedene ET-Modelle wurden ausgewählt und getestet. Anhand einer einfachen theoretischen Untersuchung zeigte sich, dass die ET-Modelle bereits auf eine geringfügige Änderung von nur einer Eingangsvariablen sehr unterschiedlich reagieren. Fraglich ist nun, wie sich die durch diese Modelle berechnete ET verändert, wenn die gesamten durch den Klimawandel hervorgerufenen Änderungen der Eingangsgrößen berücksichtigt werden. Dazu wurde ein auf dem HBV-Konzept basierendes räumlich verteiltes hydrologisches Modell aufgestellt und mit den aus den verschiedenen ET-Modellen resultierenden Ergebnissen als Input nacheinander gespeist. Die Modellierung wurde auf das Einzugsgebiet des Oberen Neckars (ca. 4000 km2) angewandt. Das Einzugsgebiet wurde in 13 Teileinzugsgebiete mit deutlichen Unterschieden eingeteilt. Die verschiedenen ET-Modelle wurden getestet, indem das hydrologische Modell auf klimatisch verschiedene Jahre geeicht und dann auf klimatisch entgegengesetzte Jahre ausgewertet wurde. Dazu wurden verschiedene Zeitreihen mit jeweils 10 klimatisch ähnlichen Jahren (10 kalte, 10 warme, 10 nasse und 10 trockene Jahre aus der Zeitreihe 1961-1990) zusammengestellt. Das hydrologische Modell wurde auf jeweils eine dieser Zeitreihen geeicht und anschließend folgendermaßen validiert. Im ersten Schritt wurde das Modell für dieselbe Zeitreihe ausgewertet, die auch für die Eichung verwendet worden war. Danach erfolgte die Auswertung auf die klimatisch entgegengesetzte Zeitreihe, beispielsweise wurde das Modell, dass auf die kalten Jahre geeicht worden war, nun hinsichtlich der erzielten Ergebnisse für die warmen Jahre untersucht. Eine geringe Abweichung der beiden Ergebnisse bedeutet eine gute Übertragbarkeit des Modells. Indem das Modell auch auf die kontinuierliche Zeitreihe 1991–2000 angewandt wurde, wurde die Übertragbarkeit zusätzlich getestet. Die Kalibrierung eines hydrologischen Modells, das den Einfluss eines Klimawandels bestimmen soll, stellt eine besondere Herausforderung dar - nicht nur bei der Auswahl von geeigneten Perioden für die Kalibrierung und die Validierung, sondern auch bei der Aufstellung einer geeigneten Zielfunktion. Eine gängige Zielfunktion ist die Nash-Sutcliffe-Effizienz. Die Güte des Modells wird dabei durch den Vergleich berechneter Werte mit beobachteten Werten ermittelt. Dieser Vergleich wird meist anhand von Tageswerten durchgeführt, was zu unerkannten systematischen Fehlern führen kann. In dem hier gewählten Ansatz wird ein auf Simulated-Annealing basierender Optimierungsalgorithmus vorgestellt, der zur Kalibrierung nicht nur Tageswerte, sondern zusätzlich auch Jahres- und Extremwerte in unterschiedlichen Kombinationen verwendet. Welche Kalibrierung sich am besten zur Bestimmung der Auswirkungen von Klimaänderungen eignet, wurde durch einen umfangreichen Vergleich der Ergebnisse festgestellt. Auch dabei wurden wieder unterschiedliche Zeitskalen verwendet: die Ergebnisse wurden nicht nur auf Tagesbasis ausgewertet, sondern auch zu Wochen, Monaten, Jahreszeiten, Halbjahren und ganzen Jahren aggregiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass einige der ET-Modelle, die unter den gegenwärtigen Klimabedingungen realistische Werte berechnen, dies bei geänderten Klimabedingungen nicht mehr vermögen. Weiterhin hat sich gezeigt, dass eine nur auf Tageswerten basierende Kalibrierung zu unzureichenden Ergebnissen bei der Übertragung der Modelle zwischen klimatisch unterschiedlich ausgeprägten Zeitreihen führt. Der Einsatz einer Zielfunktion, die sowohl Tageswerte als auch Jahresaggregationen der Tageswerte berücksichtigt, hat sich hingegen bewährt. Climate change (CC) will impact water resources. Assessing the extent of these impacts in due time is an important task, as it forms the basis for decision making. Unfortunately, the extent of this forecasted impact depends very much on data and tools used for this task. Although such methods might work well with present climatic conditions, it has to be doubted whether their results can still be relied upon in a changed climate. The uncertainties in the forecasts are partly of meteorological and partly of hydrological origin. Whereas the uncertainties of GCMs are well known and often discussed, the problems of hydrological models in this context are seldom investigated. In particular the uncertainty in process representation within the hydrological models must be revised. This dissertation focuses on the representation of the evapotranspiration (ET) process, because this process will be strongly influenced by CC. For this purpose, the suitability of nine different ET models was investigated. In a theoretical investigation, the sensitivity of the ET models to only a small change in temperature was found to be very different. Thus the question had to be raised as to how the resulting ET from these models will change with the entire predicted CC. Therefore a spatially distributed hydrological model based on the HBV concept was set up and the results of the different ET models were used consecutively as input to the hydrological model. The modelling was applied on the Upper Neckar catchment, a mesoscale river in southwestern Germany with a basin size of about 4,000 km2. This catchment was divided into 13 subcatchments with different subcatchment characteristics. The suitability of the different ET approaches was checked by calibrating the hydrological model on different climatic periods and then applying the model on other climatic periods. Thus, different 10-year periods with different climatic conditions were compiled: 10 cold, 10 warm, 10 wet and 10 dry years from the time series 1961–1990 were collected. The first step was to adapt the model to the same period it was calibrated to. Then the model was applied to other 10 years, i.e. the model calibrated on for example, the cold years was used on the warm years. The transferability was also checked by applying the models on the period 1991–2000. For the investigation of the impact of CC, the calibration of the model must meet special requirements. Apart from the selection of proper periods for calibration and validation, this also concerns the establishment of a suitable objective function. Such a function is the Nash Sutcliffe efficiency. Usually it is calculated comparing observed and modelled daily values. In this study it is shown that problems in the transfer from one climatic condition to the other cannot be detected on the base of daily values. Therefore parameter sets were optimized by an automatic calibration procedure based on Simulated Annealing, which considered the model performance on different time scales simultaneously (days up to years). As the results show, some of the ET models, which work well under stationary conditions, are not able to reproduce changes in a realistic manner. The results also show that calibrating a hydrological model that is supposed to handle short as well as long term signals becomes an important task; the objective function especially has to be chosen very carefully.

During recent decades, observations of several variables provide evidence of the ongoing anthropogenic climate change in the Mediterranean region, particularly increase of mean and extreme temperatures, and dry environmental conditions. Climate projections show that the region will among the most affected regions by climate change, specifically regarding precipitation and the hydrological cycle, but also mean warming and heat extremes (in both the terrestrial and marine environment), sea level rise and sea water acidification. Basin-wide, annual mean temperatures are now 1.5°C above the preindustrial level. In the last decades dry conditions have become more frequent and a large reduction of glaciers across high mountains of the Mediterranean has occurred at a progressively increasing pace. Mediterranean Sea waters have become warmer and saltier, Mediterranean sea level has risen at a rate (1.4 mm yr-1) similar to the global trend at centennial scale. In the future, the regional average warming will exceed the global mean value by 20% and it might reach 5.6°C at the end of the 21st century in the RCP8.5 high emission scenario. Heat waves and warm temperature extremes will intensify. Total annual precipitation is expected to decrease over most of the region (the average reduction rate is approximately 4% per each degree of global warming). However, magnitude and spatial distribution of changes are uncertain, because of differences among models. Dry conditions will be further enhanced by increasing evapotranspiration over land. At the same time, the inter-annual variability of the hydrological cycle will increase, with longer dry spells especially in the southern areas. Extreme precipitation events will become more intense over large parts of the northern Mediterranean areas. Mediterranean mean sea level is projected to be at the end of the 21st century in the range from 20 to 110 cm higher than at the end of the 20th century, depending on the level of anthropogenic emissions. Sub-regional and local relative sea level rise will be further modulated by vertical land motions and regional circulation features (with deviations in the order of 10 cm from the basin average). Therefore, though in the future milder marine storms are expected, coastal hazards, floods and erosion will increase, because of mean sea level rise. Widespread seawater warming will continue. Annual mean surface temperature will increase 2.7-3.8°C and 1.1-2.1°C in one century under the RCP8.5 and the RCP4.5 scenarios, respectively. Marine heat waves will become longer, more intense than today and their spatial extent will increase. Seawater acidification will continue, with a pH reduction that might larger than 0.4 units at the end of the 21st century

Reducing agronomic input supply can significantly contribute to decrease the environmental impact of bioenergy cropping systems. Currently, there is a renewed industrial interest in non-food oil crops for different end-uses application. Among species from Brassica genus, Brassica carinata A. Braun is an interesting winter annual crop in warm and semi-arid environments and may provide a rotation alternative with cereal crops, sourcing non-edible oil for the industry, additional incomes to the farmers and soil benefits. The present study compared four Brassica carinata lines (GID-6165, GIP-6164, GID-6091, GID-6084) under two different organic fertilization levels (80 and 160 kg N ha-1) in a semiarid Mediterranean area. These four lines have not been tested in Southern Italy previously, nor under the present low-input cultivation practices in semiarid Mediterranean area. Main findings showed a significant fertilization effect (P=0.05), with the high-input providing higher seed yields and harvest index than low-input. There was no genotype effect, however, the gap between potential (i.e. seed yield at the programmed plant density) and actual yields was rather high for GID-6165 and GID-6080. On the other hand, genotype had the largest effect on the thousand seed weight and the residual biomass yield. In general, GID-6091 and GID-6165 reached seed physiological maturity earlier than GID-6084 and GID-6164 lines. The present study proved that improved B. carinata lines can be grown in semiarid Mediterranean area under low-input organic systems, providing satisfactory seed yields. However, seedbed preparation was noticed to be key to narrow the gap between potential and actual seed yield, particularly under the present clay soil. Proceedings of the 30th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 9-12 May 2022, Online, pp. 120-124

Increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the earth’s atmosphere are leading to global warming, which, over time, has been changing the planet’s climate and will continue to do so in the future (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2021). This global change increases uncertainty about the timing, occurrence, and extent of climate change related hazards. However, hazards do not automatically translate into disasters as vulnerability plays a key role in this scenario. This thesis uses the Pressure and Release (PAR) model by Wisner et al. (2004) to examine how the vulnerabilities of the Republic of Haiti and the Dominican Republic are different from each other with regards to current and future climate change events. Furthermore, I investigate the reasons for these differences. This is particularly interesting because the two countries share one island yet differ significantly in their resilience to climate change hazards. The analysis shows that vulnerabilities persist in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. However, they do so to different degrees and in slightly different areas, rooted in an intertwined but unalike history of the two countries. Haiti’s main restraint is weak governance, which inhibits the country’s economic and social development, while the Dominican Republic deliberately increases the vulnerabilities of Haitian descendants. Both countries must focus on increasing resilience in urban areas as the majority of the island’s inhabitants will be living there, and they function as sites for livelihood generation and overall economic activity. Furthermore, reforestation and sustainable agriculture are crucial for reducing vulnerabilities to climate change hazards in the long term. B-DS

On behalf of the EURAF2020 Scientific and Organizing Committees, we are very pleased to introduce the rich collection of research on agroforestry illustrated in this book of abstracts and presented within the 5° European Agroforestry Conference. Unfortunately, as we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to meet only remotely, despite all the efforts of our local and national organizers to hold the conference in presence. We are conscious about the completely different dimension, which does not allow participants to meet, discuss and live the conference supported by an environment socially vibrant and rich of cross-cultural stimuli as the real Sardinia can offer. Nevertheless, in accordance with the mission of the European Agroforestry Federation, EURAF, to promote agroforestry knowledge, we wish to support the sharing of data presented and solicit a fruitful scientific confrontation on agroforestry issues. This book is the result of a long and rigorous work performed by the authors (about 230 abstracts sent from 5 continents and 37 countries) and members of the Scientific Committee. The book will be one of the tools supporting such confrontation we are glad to foster from the heart of the Mediterranean.

Climate change is already transforming the seascapes of our oceans by changing the energy availability and the metabolic rates of the organisms. Among the ecosystem-engineering species that structure the seascape, marine animal forests (MAFs) are the most widespread. These habitats, mainly composed of suspension feeding organisms, provide structural complexity to the sea floor, analogous to terrestrial forests. Because primary and secondary productivity is responding to different impacts, in particular to the rapid ongoing environmental changes driven by climate change, this paper presents some directions about what could happen to different MAFs depending on these fast changes. Climate change could modify the resistance or resilience of MAFs, potentially making them more sensitive to impacts from anthropic activities (i.e. fisheries and coastal management), and vice versa, direct impacts may amplify climate change constraints in MAFs. Such changes will have knock-on effects on the energy budgets of active and passive suspension feeding organisms, as well as on their phenology, larval nutritional condition, and population viability. How the future seascape will be shaped by the new energy fluxes is a crucial question that has to be urgently addressed to mitigate and adapt to the diverse impacts on natural systems.