• Energy Research

A methodological approach based on detailed land-use map, high-resolution LiDAR data and field surveys was developed to categorize productive and non-productive mixed forests, both in term of stand attributes and structural diversity. In 2011, leaf-off dedicated airborne LiDAR data were collected in a 20,000 ha inland patchy area which was representative of soil land use in the Apennines mountains of southern Italy. By combining field and LiDAR data in 5574 ha of forests with coexisting evergreen and deciduous species, wemodelled common forest stand variables (height, diameter, volumeand biomass)with high accuracy (0.60 <= Adj.R2 <= 0.89).Moreover, a moderate correlation (0.425 <= ? <= 0.462) between field- and LiDAR-derived diversity indices was found. About 3393 ha of forests are enclosed in protected areas of the Natura 2000 network, which in turn possesses 77% (~ 576,286 Mg) of total aboveground dry biomass. Overall, eight forest types were identified, one of which, the European beech, is only found in the Natura 2000 sites,while other forest types are also found elsewhere. This is the first study to undertake a LiDAR analysis ofMediterranean forests in the Campania Region and might help better evaluate trade-off, especially in protected areas, in order to enhance multiple benefits and support sustainable management of forests.

LANDSUPPORT is a Horizon2020 project, funded by the European Commission, stands for" Development of Integrated Web-Based Land Decision Support System Aiming Towards the Implementation of Policies for Agriculture and Environment"(www. landsupport. eu) The project aims at developing a web-based, open-access GeoSpatial Decision Support System (S-DSS) devoted to reconciling agriculture, environmental sustainability and policy implementation. Overall, the S-DSS will contribute to the development and implementation of land use policies in Europe, and it will promote an integrated and participatory approach towards rural development and environmental policies allowing, among others, evaluation of trade-offs between different land uses. A specific tool will be implemented to face the current issue of food security and optimization of land use in agriculture for addressing the Sustainable ...

Soil water availability is one of the main components of the terroir concept, influencing crop yield and fruit composition in grapes. The aim of this work is to analyze some elements of the "natural environment" of terroir (climate and soil) in combination with the intra-specific biodiversity of yield responses of grapevine to water availability. From a reference (1961-90) to a future (2021-50) climate case, the effects of climate evolution on soil water availability are assessed and, regarding soil water regime as a predictor variable, the potential spatial distribution of wine-producing cultivars is determined. In a region of Southern Italy (Valle Telesina, 20,000 ha), where a terroir classification has been produced (Bonfante et al., 2011), we applied an agro-hydrological model to determine water availability indicators. Simulations were performed in 60 soil typological units, over the entire study area, and water availability (= hydrological) indicators were determined. Two climate cases were considered: reference (1961-90) and future (2021-2050), the former from climatic statistics on observed variables, and the latter from statistical downscaling of predictions by general circulation models (AOGCM) under A1B SRES scenario. Climatic data consist of daily time series of maximum and minimum temperature, and daily rainfall on a grid with a spatial resolution of 35 km. Spatial and temporal variability of hydrological indicators was addressed. With respect to temporal variability, both inter-annual and intra-annual (i.e. at different stages of crop cycle) variability were analyzed. Some cultivarspecific relations between hydrological indicators and characteristics of must quality were established. Moreover, for several wine-producing cultivars, hydrological requirements were determined by means of yield response functions to soil water availability, through the re-analysis of experimental data derived from scientific literature. The standard errors of estimated requirements were determined. To assess cultivars adaptability, hydrological requirements were evaluated against hydrological indicators. A probabilistic assessment of adaptability was performed, and the inaccuracy of estimated hydrological requirements was accounted for by the error of estimate and its distribution. Maps of cultivars potential distribution, i.e. locations where each cultivar is expected to be compatible with climate, were derived and possible options for adaptation to climate change were defined. The 2021 - 2050 climate scenario was characterized by higher temperatures throughout the year and by a significant decrease in precipitation during spring and autumn. The results have shown the relevant variability of soils water regime and its effects on cultivars adaptability. In the future climate scenario, a hydrological indicator (i.e. relative evapotranspiration deficit - RETD), averaged over the growing season, showed an average increase of 5-8 %, and more pronounced increases occurred in the phenological phases of berry formation and ripening. At the locations where soil hydrological conditions were favourable (like the ancient terraces), hydrological indicators were quite similar in both climate scenarios and the adaptability of the cultivars was high both in the reference and future climate case. The work was carried out within the Italian national project AGROSCENARI funded by the Ministry for Agricultural, Food and Forest Policies (MIPAAF, D.M. 8608/7303/2008)

Climate change directly influences agricultural sectors, presenting the need to identify mitigating actions that can make local farming communities and crop production more resilient. In this context, the viticultural sector is one of those most challenged by climate change (CC) due to its great impact on grapevine cultivar adaptation, also generating a high degree of uncertainty about expected grape quality and, therefore, farmers' future incomes. Therefore, understanding how suitability for viticulture is changing under CC is of primary interest in the development of adaptation strategies in traditional wine-growing regions. Within this framework, the planning and managing of vineyards that aim at high quality wine is carried out by means of viticultural zoning procedures which are mostly based on empirical approaches. Considering that climate is an essential part of the terroir system, the expected variability in climate change could have a marked influence on terroir resilience with important effects on local farming communities in viticultural regions. From this perspective, the aim of this paper is to define a new dynamic viticultural zoning procedure (DVZ) that is able to integrate the effects of CC on grape quality responses and evaluate terroir resilience, providing a support tool for stakeholders involved in viticultural planning (winegrowers, winegrower consortiums, policy makers etc.). To achieve these aims, a Hybrid Land Evaluation System (HLES), combining qualitative (standard Land Evaluation system) and quantitative (simulation model) approaches, was applied within a traditional region devoted to high quality wine production in Southern Italy (Valle Telesina, BN), for a specific grapevine cultivar (Aglianico), considering high resolution climate projections that were derived under two different IPCC scenarios, namely RCP 4.5 and RCP8.5. The results obtained indicate that: (i) only 2% of the suitable area of Valle Telesina expresses the concept of terroir resilience oriented towards Aglianico ultra quality grape (UQG) production; (ii) within 2010-2040, it is expected that 41% of the area suitable for Aglianico cultivation will need irrigation to achieve quality grape production; (iii) by 2100, climate change benefits for the cultivation of Aglianico will decrease, as well as the suitable area.

AbstractClimate change (CC) is a global problem bringing multiple different changes in different regions that exacerbate the conflict between landscape demands. Policy in EU and elsewhere are facing the huge challenge of CC by developing specific regulations and strategies (e.g., European climate law, RDP 2014–2020) generally shaped in the United Nations Frameworks Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The “new EU strategy on adaptation to climate change” sets out how the EU can adapt to the unavoidable impacts of CC and become climate resilient by 2050. Unfortunately, the factual implementation of these policies remains critical. Most often there is a lack of science‐based decision support tools empowering regional and local levels to act toward climate resilience. Here we have produced a strong interdisciplinary research effort to support the implementation of the EU strategy on adaptation to CC by providing free web‐based Decision Support Systems having a strong focus on factual territories. Our Geospatial Decision Support System aims to support local authorities/communities, scientists, and other stakeholders in EU and more in detail in Italy in better understanding and implementing local adaptation to climate change by means of a “Climate Change Resilience” toolbox oriented to evaluate the climatic anomalies and thermal crop adaptation. Specifically, in this research, two implemented tools have been discussed: (i) tool on General climatic variation and (ii) tool on Crop thermal adaptation. These tools are demonstrated in two different case studies at both EU and national level. Such a toolbox has been produced in the framework of the LANDSUPPORT Horizon 2020 project (www.landsupport.eu).

Water deficit limiting yields is one of the negative aspects of climate change. However, this applies particularly when emphasis is on biomass production (e.g. for field crops), but not necessarily for plants where quality, not quantity is most relevant. For grapevine development, mild water stress occurring during specific phenological phases is an important factor when producing good quality wines. It induces the production of anthocyanins and aroma precursors and then could offer an opportunity to increase winegrower's income. A multidisciplinary study was carried out in Campania region (Southern Italy), an area well known for high quality wine production. Growth of Aglianico grapevine cultivar, with a standard clone population on 1103 Paulsen rootstocks, was studied on two different types of soil: Calcisols and Cambisols occurring along a slope of 90 m length with 11% gradient. The agro-hydrological model SWAP was calibrated and applied to estimate soil-plant water status during three consecutive seasons (2011-2013). Crop water stress index (CWSI), as estimated by the model, was related to leaf water potential, sugar content of grape bunches and wine quality (e.g. content of tannins). For both soils, the correlations between quality measurements and CWSI were high (e.g. - 0.97** with sugar; 0.895* with anthocyanins in the grape skins). The model was also applied to explore effects of future climate conditions (2021-2051) obtained from statistical downscaling of Global Circulation Models (AOGCM) and to estimate the effect of the climate on CWSI and hence on grape quality. Effects of climate change on grape quality indicate: (i) a resilient behavior of Calcisol to produce high quality wine, (ii) a good potentiality for improving the quality wine in Cambisol. The present study represents an example of multidisciplinary approach in which soil scientists, hydro-pedologists, crop modellers, plant physiologists and oenologists have integrated their knowledge and skills in order to deal with the complex interactions among different components of an agricultural system.

Climate change (CC) directly influences agricultural sectors, presenting the need to identify both adaptation and mitigation actions that can make local farming communities and crop production more resilient. In this context, the viticultural sector is one of those most challenged by CC due to the need to combine grape quality, grapevine cultivar adaptation and therefore farmers' future incomes. Thus, understanding how suitability for viticulture is changing under CC is of primary interest in the development of adaptation strategies in traditional wine-growing regions. Considering that climate is an essential part of the terroir system, the expected variability in climate change could have a marked influence on terroir resilience with important effects on local farming communities in viticultural regions. From this perspective, the aim of this paper is to define a new dynamic viticultural zoning procedure that is able to integrate the effects of CC on grape quality responses and evaluate terroir resilience, providing a support tool for stakeholders involved in viticultural planning (winegrowers, winegrower consortiums, policy makers etc.). To achieve these aims, a Hybrid Land Evaluation System, combining qualitative (standard Land Evaluation) and quantitative (simulation model) approaches, was applied within a traditional region devoted to high quality wine production in Southern Italy (Valle Telesina, BN), for a specific grapevine cultivar (Aglianico). The work employed high resolution climate projections that were derived under two different IPCC scenarios, namely RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5. The results obtained indicate that: (i) only 2% of the suitable area of Valle Telesina expresses the concept of terroir resilience orientated towards Aglianico ultra quality grape production; (ii) within 2010-2040, it is expected that 41% of the area suitable for Aglianico cultivation will need irrigation to achieve quality grape production; (iii) by 2100, climate change benefits for the cultivation of Aglianico will decrease, as well as the suitable areas.

AbstractNowadays, there is contrasting evidence between the ongoing continuing and widespread environmental degradation and the many means to implement environmental sustainability actions starting from good policies (e.g. EU New Green Deal, CAP), powerful technologies (e.g. new satellites, drones, IoT sensors), large databases and large stakeholder engagement (e.g. EIP‐AGRI, living labs). Here, we argue that to tackle the above contrasting issues dealing with land degradation, it is very much required to develop and use friendly and freely available web‐based operational tools to support both the implementation of environmental and agriculture policies and enable to take positive environmental sustainability actions by all stakeholders. Our solution is the S‐DSS LANDSUPPORT platform, consisting of a free web‐based smart Geospatial CyberInfrastructure containing 15 macro‐tools (and more than 100 elementary tools), co‐designed with different types of stakeholders and their different needs, dealing with sustainability in agriculture, forestry and spatial planning. LANDSUPPORT condenses many features into one system, the main ones of which were (i) Web‐GIS facilities, connection with (ii) satellite data, (iii) Earth Critical Zone data and (iv) climate datasets including climate change and weather forecast data, (v) data cube technology enabling us to read/write when dealing with very large datasets (e.g. daily climatic data obtained in real time for any region in Europe), (vi) a large set of static and dynamic modelling engines (e.g. crop growth, water balance, rural integrity, etc.) allowing uncertainty analysis and what if modelling and (vii) HPC (both CPU and GPU) to run simulation modelling ‘on‐the‐fly’ in real time. Two case studies (a third case is reported in the Supplementary materials), with their results and stats, covering different regions and spatial extents and using three distinct operational tools all connected to lower land degradation processes (Crop growth, Machine Learning Forest Simulator and GeOC), are featured in this paper to highlight the platform's functioning. Landsupport is used by a large community of stakeholders and will remain operational, open and free long after the project ends. This position is rooted in the evidence showing that we need to leave these tools as open as possible and engage as much as possible with a large community of users to protect soils and land.