• Energy Research

Steep-slope agricultural landscapes are under threat due to climate change. On the one hand, the growing frequency of extreme high-intensity rainfall events concentrated in both temporal and spatial scales are causing flash floods or slope failure risk scenarios. On the other hand, future climate projections indicate a significant expansion of arid zones in the steep slope agricultural system. There is evidence that these landscapes face a high risk of growing water scarcity. Considering their unique role in crop production, ecosystem diversity, and crop production, ecosystem diversity, and cultural heritage, understanding sustainable water resource management for mitigating climate change-induced drought has never been more urgent than today. In these landscapes, unique indigenous knowledge of water conservation is adopted to manage water resources improving their resilience optimally. It is, therefore, necessary to promote water storage to mitigate floods or increase the resilience to prolonged drought (creating at the same time favourable conditions for biodiversity). Modern technological advances (e.g., high-resolution remote sensing and GIS-based modelling) are crucial in supporting these activities and understanding earth’s surface processes.

Steep-slope cropland plays a vital role in food production, economic development, ecosystem diversity, and European cultural heritage. However, these systems are susceptible to extreme weather events. The 2022 summer drought significantly impacted European agriculture, but the specific effects on steep-slope crops remain uncertain. Clarifying this is essential for comprehending similar future events and for implementing effective water management strategies to ensure the sustainability of steep-slope agriculture and associated ecosystem services. This study quantitatively analyzes the spatial distribution of twelve major European steep-slope (>12%) crops and assesses agricultural drought severity during the 2022 events using open-access spatial data. The satellite-based Vegetation Health Index (VHI) is utilized to identify critical hotspots. Results show that olive grove is the most widespread crop in steep slope agriculture (34% of total area), followed by wheat (24%), maize (16%), and vineyard (11%). Almost half of the steep-slope agriculture in Europe suffered drought during summer 2022. Vineyards were hardest affected at 79%, primarily in northern Portugal, northern Spain, southern France, and central Italy. Sunflowers followed at 62%, mainly in Spain, central Italy, southern France, and northern Romania. Olive groves ranked third at 59%, with the most impact in northern Portugal, southern and central Spain, and southern Italy. Maize was also significantly affected at 54%. In this paper, we therefore highlight the need to increase steep-slope agriculture resilience by improving water management and promoting sustainable land practices.

Rivers are under increasing pressure from anthropogenic impacts with incremental dam construction, experiencing global and regional alteration due to river disconnectivity, flow regulation, and sediment reduction. Assessing the cumulative impacts of dams on river disconnectivity in large river basins can help us better understand how humans disintegrate river systems and change the natural flow regimes. Using the Yangtze basin as the study area, this study employed three modified metrics (river connectivity index, RCI; basin disconnectivity index, BDI; and the degree of regulation for each river section, DOR) to evaluate the cumulative impacts on river disconnectivity over the past 50 years. The results indicated that the Yangtze had experienced strong alterations, despite varying degrees and spatial patterns. Among the major tributaries, the greatest impact (lowest RCI value) happened in the Wu tributary basin due to the construction of cascade dams on the main stem of the tributary, while the lowest impact (highest RCI value) happened in the Fu tributary basin, which still has no dams on its main stem. Collectively, rivers in the upper Yangtze reaches experienced more serious disturbances than their counterparts in the middle and lower reaches. The BDI results displayed that a substantial part of the Yangtze River, especially the Wu, Min, Jialing, and Yuan tributaries, only maintain connectivity among one to three representative river systems. No part of the Yangtze connects all the 12 representative river systems. This study also revealed that small dams can also exert significant impacts in flow regulation on regional river systems through their sheer number and density. The study results can help promote more environmentally sustainable river management policies in the Yangtze basin.

Increasing global food demand and economic growth result in increasing competition over scarce freshwater resources, worsened by climate change and pollution. The agricultural sector has the largest share in the water footprint of humanity. While most studies focus on estimating water footprints (WFs) of crops through modeling, there are only few experimental field studies. The current work aims to understand the effect of supposedly better agricultural practices, particularly precision agriculture (variable rate application of fertilizers and pesticides) and conservation agriculture (minimum, strip, or no-tillage), on water deterioration and water pollution. We analyzed the results from an experimental field study in the northeast of Italy, in which four different crops are grown across three years of crops rotation. We compared minimum, strip, and no-tillage systems undergoing variable to uniform rate application. Grey WFs are assessed based on a field dataset using yield maps data, soil texture, and crop operations field. Leaching and associated grey WFs are assessed based on application rates and various environmental factors. Yields are measured in the field and recorded in a precision map. The results illustrate how precision agriculture combined with soil conservation tillage systems can reduce the grey water footprint by the 10%. We assessed the grey Water Footprint for all the field operation processes during the three-year crop rotation.

Viticulture in Argentina is an important socioeconomic sector, reflected in a significant wine market and tourism. However, climate change and related extreme events are serious concerns. The main issues are heatwaves, hailstorms, and heavy rainfall, resulting in damage to vineyards. While climate change impacts have already been discussed for regions such as the Mediterranean, the literature lacks an up-to-date overview of Argentine viticulture and potential mitigation solutions. In a country culturally and economically connected to the world of wine, it is strategic to bridge this gap to be prepared for a climatically adverse future. This perspective paper presents an overview of Argentine viticulture and its relationship to climate change. We focus on the Mendoza region, one of the most productive areas and home to cultural landscapes where internationally recognized wines are produced. Climate change is already occurring, a fact we observed by analyzing data from the past decades. We discussed how heatwaves in the lowlands drive farmers to move to the Andes slopes looking for more favorable conditions. But new threats arise, such as extreme rainfall. Due to surface hydrological processes, they can cause land degradation and compromise vineyards. We investigate these phenomena in detail, highlighting how they represent a growing challenge that must be addressed for the sustainable development of future viticulture in the area. Therefore, we propose mitigation strategies for more resilient production, drawing inspiration from the Sustainable Development Goals and suggesting a framework that can be extended to broader contexts worldwide.

Lakes in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya-Tibetan (HKHT) regions are crucial indicators for the combined impacts of regional climate change and resultant glacier retreat. However, they lack long-term systematic monitoring and thus their responses to recent climatic change still remain only partially understood. This study investigated lake extent fluctuations in the HKHT regions over the past 40 years using Landsat (MSS/TM/ETM+/OLI) images obtained from the 1970s to 2014. Influenced by different regional atmospheric circulation systems, our results show that lake changing patterns are distinct from region to region, with the most intensive lake shrinking observed in northeastern HKHT (HKHT Interior, Tarim, Yellow, Yangtze), while the most extensive expansion was observed in the western and southwestern HKHT (Amu Darya, Ganges Indus and Brahmaputra), largely caused by the proliferation of small lakes in high-altitude regions during 1970s–1995. In the past 20 years, extensive lake expansions (~39.6% in area and ~119.1% in quantity) were observed in all HKHT regions. Climate change, especially precipitation change, is the major driving force to the changing dynamics of the lake fluctuations; however, effects from the glacier melting were also significant, which contributed approximately 31.9–40.5%, 16.5–39.3%, 12.8–29.0%, and 3.3–6.1% of runoff to lakes in the headwaters of the Tarim, Amu Darya, Indus, and Ganges, respectively. We consider that the findings in this paper could have both immediate and long-term implications for dealing with water-related hazards, controlling glacial lake outburst floods, and securing water resources in the HKHT regions, which contain the headwater sources for some of the largest rivers in Asia that sustain 1.3 billion people.

Cold regions, including high-latitude and high-altitude landscapes, are experiencing profound environmental changes driven by global warming. With the advance of earth observation technology, remote sensing has become increasingly important for detecting, monitoring, and understanding environmental changes over vast and remote regions. This paper provides an overview of recent achievements, challenges, and opportunities for land remote sensing of cold regions by (a) summarizing the physical principles and methods in remote sensing of selected key variables related to ice, snow, permafrost, water bodies, and vegetation; (b) highlighting recent environmental nonstationarity occurring in the Arctic, Tibetan Plateau, and Antarctica as detected from satellite observations; (c) discussing the limits of available remote sensing data and approaches for regional monitoring; and (d) exploring new opportunities from next-generation satellite missions and emerging methods for accurate, timely, and multi-scale mapping of cold regions.

AbstractIn a fluvial system, mountain basins control sediment export to the lowland rivers. Hence, analysis of erosion processes and sediment delivery patterns in mountain basins is a key factor for many applications such as land‐use management, hazard assessment and infrastructure design. Several studies have investigated the alterations triggered by recent climatic change on the hydrological regime, while only a few works have explored the consequences on fluvial sediment dynamics. Here, we combined and analyzed the quasi‐unique dataset of climatic conditions, landform response and sediment export produced, since 1986 in the Rio Cordon basin (5 km2, Eastern Italian Alps) to examine the sediment delivery processes occurring in the last 3 decades. The temperature, precipitation and fluvial sediment fluxes in the basin were analyzed using continuous measurement executed by a permanent monitoring station, while the evolution of sediment source areas was investigated using three sediment source inventories. The results showed that during the period 1986–1993 the sediment fluxes (339 Mg yr−1) reflected the stable trend of the climatic conditions. The period between the first and second source inventory (i.e. 1994–2006) was characterized by climatic fluctuations and by the occurrence of high magnitude floods. Nevertheless, a limited increase in the extent of sediment source areas was detected, suggesting that the increased sediment export (759 Mg yr−1) was mainly driven by in‐channel sediment supply. Notwithstanding the marked climate warming and the increased precipitation, a weak source area evolution and a reduction in sediment export (237 Mg yr−1) were observed during the period 2007–2015. In particular, the higher rainfall did not result in an intensification of flood events, stressing the absence of hillslope‐channel connectivity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.