Land Planning, Agro-forest Systems, and Implications for Ecosystem Services: Insights from Northern Italy

Barbara Ermini¹, Marcela Prokopov ², Adriano Conte³ and Antonio Tomao^{4, 5,}*

¹Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy

²Global Change Research Institute CAS, Bělidla 986/4a, 603 00 Brno, Czech Republic

³Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA), Research Centre for Forestry and Wood (FL), Rome, 00166, Italy

⁴Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Research Centre for Forestry and Wood, Viale S. Margherita, 80, 52100 Arezzo, Italy

⁵Department of Economics and Law, University of Macerata, Via Armaroli 43, I-62100 Macerata, Italy

E-mail: antonio.tomao@crea.gov.it

*Corresponding Author

Received 18 July 2021; Accepted 21 July 2021; Publication 14 September 2021

Abstract

Negative environmental changes generally addressed as ‘syndromes’ are evaluated in the context of Soil Degradation (SD) and interpreted by using a ‘Land-Use/Land Cover Changes’ (LULCCs) framework in order to disentangle ‘past trajectories’, ‘present patterns’, and ‘future changes’. This approach allows to discuss the potential impact on SD processes and it represents an informed basis for identifying measurable outcomes of SD. This study focuses on the case of Emilia Romagna, a region located in the North of Italy with high-value added agricultural productions. A multi-temporal analysis of land-use changes between 1954 and 2008 has been proposed, discussing the evolution of associated SD syndromes in Emilia Romagna. The contributing information have been used as a baseline for Sustainable Land Management (SLM) strategies. This framework of analysis provides useful tools to investigate and to monitor the effects of SD in the Mediterranean basin where several regions underwent common development patterns yelding global pathological symptoms of environmental degradation.

Keywords: Land degradation, syndromes of change, ecosystem services, forests, mediterranean region.

Introduction

Beside Industrial Metabolism (Ayres, 1994; Anderberg, 1998), land use and land cover (LULC) is a valuable field of study that permits to investigate and assess natural and, overall, anthropogenic induced environmental changes (Meyer and Turner II, 1992, Lambin et al., 2006; Ceccarelli et al., 2014). It allows to connect local and global alteration of the land surface and its physical and biotic cover (Petschel-Held et al., 1999; Garedew et al., 2009; Apollonio et al., 2016; Kidane et al., 2019; Gomes et al., 2020). Land use/land cover (LULC) changes are the result of a complex interplay between socio-economic, institutional and environmental factors (Turner et al., 1994; Lambin and Geist, 2011; Falcucci et al., 2007; Marondedze and Sch tt, 2019). They produce direct and indirect impacts on natural habitat, biodiversity, terrestrial landscapes and, ultimately, ecosystem sustainability (Downing and L deke, 2002; Brink and Eva, 2009; Su et al., 2012; Yohannes et al., 2021). Taking advantage of mapping but also modern tools such as remote sensing techniques and GIS (Singh et al., 2015; Joshi et al., 2016; Fallati et al., 2017; Mohamed et al., 2020; Koko et al., 2021), this discipline has produced a large amount of datasets containing information on the human modifications of the land, either by urban expansion or other anthropogenic stressors, at a variety of spatial and temporal scales (Szilassi et al., 2006; Nath et al., 2018; Bajocco et al., 2012; Debnath et al., 2020). Accordingly, LULC changes have received a growing concern from scholars, managers and planners involved in offering future scenario of urban and environmentally sustainable development (Dewan et al., 2009; Turner et al. 2016; Li et al., 2018; Mohamed and Worku, 2020; Naikoo et al., 2020).

Results of LULC analyses, expecially long-term LULC trajectories assessment (G mez and P ramo, 2005; Ceccarelli et al., 2014; EEA, 2017; Vigl et al., 2017; Zomlot et al., 2017; Nath et al., 2018), have often constituted the informative base of further investigation methodologies such as the Syndrome Approach (L deke et al., 2004; Manuel-Navarrete et al., 2007; Weissteiner et al., 2011). Admitting the process of global change underwent fast and dangerous natural environment dynamics (climate change, biodiversity loss, limited water availability or soil degradation) that interact with complex socio-economic phenomena (population dynamics, impoverishment and inequality, public health problems, conflicts, or policy failures), this approach attempts to identify non-sustainable local and regional development patterns that present global patological symptoms of environmental degradation (Schellnhuber et al., 1997, o’Brien et al., 2004; Texeira et al., 2019). Among the globally detected Syndromes (L deke et al., 2004), Soil Degradation (SD), including desertification as its ultimate and aggravated expression (Forino et al. 2015; Ceccarelli et al., 2016), is one of the most evident symptom that characterizes most of the deteriorated biophysical/socioeconomic environments and unsustainable forms of land exploitation (Reynolds and Stafford Smith, 2002; Liu et al., 2010; Sartori et al., 2019; Sone et al., 2019). The relevance of this form of land vulnerability makes a case for further focus on the different shades of this phenomenon and, not surprisingly, Lambin and Geist (2006) proposed to apply the ‘syndrome’ concept to LULC trajectories and SD monitoring with the aim of ascertaining the apparent complexity in land-use dynamics. It provides helpful to interpretate past and future evolution of SD (Sims et al., 2020).

In fact, SD implies a general deterioration of soil quality (Mundia and Aniya, 2006; Foley et al., 2011; Lal, 2015). It assumes forms that entail erosion, organic matter decline, contamination, salinisation, compaction, soil biodiversity loss, sealing, landslides and flooding that bring a reduction into the provision of ecosystem goods and services (European Commission, 2002; Dewan and Yamaguchi, 2009; Posthumus et al., 2010; Nkonya et al., 2011; Cavender-Bares et al., 2015; Schwilch et al. 2016; Smiraglia et al., 2019). Additional processes (forest fires, habitat fragmentation, overgrazing, etc) related to modification of the landscape at large can be identified (Steffens et al., 2008: Stoate et al., 2009, Ferreira et al., 2015, Lasanta et al., 2015, Tieskens et al., 2017). These are characteristics that can be recognized in syndromes such as Overexploitation, Rural Exodus and Disaster. As noted also by Schellnhuber et al. (1997), symptoms and their interactions depend on geographical location (Kropp et al., 2006; Bitterman et al., 2016; Mohajane et al., 2018) but, in general, soil degradation syntoms are widely spread in the Mediterrrean context (Conacher and Sala, 1998; Hill et al., 2008; Riva et al., 2019; Benassi et al., 2020); actually, this area is highly affected by the Desertification Syndrome. Thus, the analysis of LULC trajectory provides helpful to detect syndroms in order to retrieve a quantification of ecosystems at risk. Given that ecosystem services are considered the base for the assessment of measurable outcomes of SD, beyond provisioning services (e.g. food production), more toward off-site services and indirect effects (UNCCD and GRF Davos, 2013), this approach may be viewed as a baseline for sustainable land management (SLM) strategies (Schwilch et al., 2014; Salvati et al., 2016; Ruiz et al., 2020).

This Mediterrean basin locates the area under examination in this study, i.e. the Italian region Emilia Romagna. This area presents a complex human-dominated ecosystems and biophysical landascape in terms of climate, soil, vegetation that is the result of cumulative anthropogenic impacts and exploitation pressures (e.g. land-use changes, crop intensification, land abandonment, population density, industry and tourism concentration, among others). In this study, the impact of past LULC trajectories (1954–2008) on soil erosion were evaluated. In addition, this study attempts to identify direct and latent relationships with relevant SD syndromes according to the scheme presented in Table 1. The implications of the study to inform sustainable land management options and to recover ecosystem services are finally discussed. Lessons from this study may provide helpful to address SD symptoms often common to several areas within the Mediterranean basin.

Table 1 The evaluation framework: from LULC trajectories to syndromes of soil degradation and implications for ecosystem services

LULC Trajectory		Soil Degradation Processes and Syndromes	Ecosystem Services	Assessment (Effects)	Sustainable land management and restoration actions
Artificial land expansion	Urban growth, Urban sprawl, expansion of residential areas, industries, services	– land take – soil sealing – protracted soil aridity – (soil) erosion (water, wind) – organic matter decline, – hydrological instability (landslides) and flooding – soil salinization – soil compaction – point and diffused soil contamination – biodiversity loss – loss of cultural landscapes – others	– Provisioning (food provision, water, energy) – Regulating (e.g. carbon sequestration) – Cultural – Supporting (soil formation and nutrient cycling)	– Types $∙$ on-site $∙$ off-site $∙$ direct $∙$ indirect – Levels $∙$ increase $∙$ decrease $∙$ neutral $∙$ controversial	$∙$ Mitigation (of causes: control the level of LD) $∙$ Adaption (adjusting to its effects) $∙$ Restoration $∙$ Compensation $∙$ Inaction
Forest (and other natural areas)	Farmland abandonment
expansion	Afforestation
Expansion of humid areas	Re-naturalization
Internal conversions artificial land
Internal conversions	Intensification
agricultural land	Extensivation
Expansion of agriculture

Study Area

This study was conducted using the whole Emilia-Romagna (see Figure 1), an administrative region (NUTS2) located in the North of Italy that covers nearly 22.120 km $^{2}$ . This region extends between the River Po (north) and the Apennine Mountains (south).

Figure 1 Emilia Romagna: location in Italy and Emilian landscapes over times and space, from 1940 to nowadays.

The present-day landscape of Emilia-Romagna is the result of interaction between various physical processes and the dogged, pervasive intervention of humans. It is one of the most fertile and productive region of Italy, thanks to its natural resources and to the mitigating effect that the Adriatic Sea has on the coastal climate. The geomorphological aspect of the region can be described taking into account three different landscape units: the alluvial plain of the Apennine rivers, the Po plain and the coastal plain toward the Adriatic sea. The Apennine ridge, which occupies the Mid-eastern area and marks the boundary between Emilia-Romagna and others regions to the west, presents significant differences in elevation (from 600 to more than 2000 meters) with impressive mountains and steep forest-covered slopes that include the region’s highest peaks. Moving to the South, it extends a complex and composite landscape made up of low often cultivated areas that alternate with badland erosions (calanchi) and high density of landslides that make this the most landslide-vulnerable zone in Italy. The majority of built-up areas located on clayey slopes, which are often farmed as meadowlands, live with the day-to-day problems and hazards posed by the landslide-susceptible “Scaly Clays”. Dozens of clay quarries dot the landscape of the “ceramic industry district” in the provinces of Reggio Emilia and Modena. Gentle foothills characterize the territory along the entire pede-Apenninic margin, from the area of Piacenza to Rimini provinces, which smoothly decline toward the alluvial plain of the Apennines rivers. This area has always attracted large fluxes of population and today it is heavily farmed. The anthropogenic mark gets more clear as far as we move toward the Po valley (alluvial plain formed by south-eastern sector of the Po) and the Adriatic Sea coast to the east. Actually, extending over approximately 30,000 square kilometres, the Po Plain is the largest alluvial plain in Western Europe. The plain is a fully anthropized territory, shaped by an intense urbanization developed in the post-war period with remarkable socioeconomic changes. Today the plain is fully farmed, presents high levels of (manufacturing) industrialization, high-tech services and tourism. Urban expansion in Emilia-Romagna has taken place at the expenses of the best agricultural soils (Salvati et al., 2013) giving rise to several synthoms of Global Syndromes that imply LD.

Methodology

A rich LULC dataset has been Made available by the Regional Cartographic and Geographic Information System Service of Emilia-Romagna. It provided harmonized and comparable dataset, as to spatial resolution and classes and geometric and subject contents, for the years 1954, 1976, 1994, 2003 and 2008. LULC changes were analyzed comparing 1954 and 2008 datasets. Analysis of changes over this period are accompanied by intra-periods investigations taking the year 1976 as a midpoint. Thus, the two time intervals 1954–1976 and 1976–2008 of comparable length in time are separately examined. This approach allows to highlight peculiarities of human and territorial development of Emilia Romagna intercurred during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. It is a paradigmatic period characterized by low-density and dispersed settlements that deeply affected land consumption and soil sealing. Meanwhile, land abandonment involved inland and mountainous areas that indirectly favored the regeneration of natural vegetation and especially forest restoring (Costantini and Lorenzetti, 2013).

Table 2 LULC changes in the period 1954–2008

Results and Discussion

The above mentioned dynamics are clearly reflected in the LULC changes between 1954 and 2008 that are summarized in Table 2. The link between economic activity, residential trend and increased mobility resulted in a clear growth of land take for urban areas and transport infrastructure of about 8%. This is accompanied by a marked reduction in the land devoted to typical agricultural activities or complex cultivation patterns (arable land and crops), with the exception of those cultivations that characterize the modern specialized high-value, high-quality food district (fruits, vineyards, etc). These changes alter the usual landscape and the environmental quality, leaving large and often irreversible land-use footprints, even if a considerable net improvement in the natural habitat (mainly forestation) is recorded. In this study, the interpretation of LULC changes in terms of meaningful land-use trajectories with impact on SD processes was developed according to Hill et al. (2008).

Figure 2 The evaluation framework: from LULC trajectories to syndromes of land degradation and implications for ecosystem services.

Figure 3 Analytical framework.

Thus, by looking at Figures 2–3, it emerges that LULC changes in Emilia-Romagna can be mainly reconducted to the following land-use trajectory: urban expansion and the abandonment of farmland. The latter took place expecially in the Southern area of the Emilia Romagna region while urbanization, and correlated phenomena of sprawl, marks the region along a gradient extending from the northern inner territories, scaling down through the mid southern provinces till the coast areas. Both dynamics represent SD processes highly associated with land take and soil sealing (Virto et al., 2015; Li and Li, 2017; Halbac-Cotoara-Zamfir et al., 2020), as the new and expanding cities took up some urban fringe or a completely new territories, implying land conversion, at the expense of loss of valuable soils in the chain of ecosystem services and global sustainability (Ustaoglu and Williams, 2017).

Figure 4 Evolution of population density in Emilia Romagna (1861, 1951, 2011).

Considering urbanization, it evolved very rapidly in the post-war period as also demonstrated by the trend of population density (Figure 4) which gives evidence to a migration of people from inland toward central and, mostly, coastal areas. The related soil consumption advanced at the expenses of the most fertile agricultural areas in the Po plain and caused well-known effects of soil sealing (Zuffetti et al., 2018). This in turn also reduces the amount of rainfall that can be absorbed and stored by soils, increasing run-off and, indirectly, soil erosion. Thus, negative off-site effects on the environmental state of catchments can be clearly identified (Romano et al., 2017). Soil deterioration is also accelerated by the removal of topsoil for site clearance that brings a relevant significant loss of its organic carbon stock and, ultimately, contributed to worsen the ‘urban heat island’ effect because increasing soil-moisture limitations on evapotranspiration.

SD syndromes are also evident in the case of farmland abandonment but controversial effects can be recognized (Rodrigo-Comino et al., 2018; Cimini et al., 2013). Actually, land leaving in inland territories of Emilia Romagna produced ‘new’ forest land, that is a potentially factor of naturalization, which represents a valuable economic and environmental asset (Haller and Bender, 2018). This is counterbalanced by the fact that land abandonment increases the risk of soil erosion, hydrological vulnerability and wildfires. Which element is to prevail cannot generally be presumed as locally-specific factors, among which climate, soil properties, type of farming (e.g. terraces) and forest management and conservation, play a role.

Figure 5 Assessment of land degradation in Emilia Romagna.

Finally, Figure 5 plots the recent regional distribution of the Environmental Sensitivity Area Index (ESAI), one of the most used framework to monitor land vulnerability to degradation (Basso et al., 2000; Lavado Contador et al., 2009; Ferrara et al., 2012). This index summarizes the performance of the examined area in term of Climate (CQI), Soil (SQI), Vegetation (VQI) and Land Management (MQI) quality indexes as the geometric mean of the four partial indicators. Focusing on the global assessment of land vulnerability, most critical values are performed in the coastal and more centrally urbanized area of the region where, as showed by sub-indeces, land management is considerably under pressure but climate relatively favorable.

Conclusions

Concern about the degradation of the properties of soils and their functions, driven or exacerbated by human activity, is globally increasing (Graves et al., 2015). It has significant implications for a number of key land policy areas including flood risk management and climate change mitigation (Halbac-Cotoara-Zamfir et al., 2020) but also general welfare and poverty dynamics, expecially in developing countries (Barbier and Hochard, 2016; Moeis et al., 2020).

Soil degradation implies not only economic costs to direct users of soils but also to the society as a whole both for present and future repercussions. The LULC approach constitutes a promising tool to interpret past trajectories and infer future transformation, as demonstrated in the case study analysed in this work. At the same time, Emilia Romagna is also highly representative of the territorial development and the environmental changes that take place in the Mediterranean context. Countries belonging to this area are experiencing similar evolution: abandonment of the agriculture land in the inner inland, conversion to pastureland, spread of intensive farming, destructive logging, forest fires expansion and a growing impact of the infrastructures and soil sealing due to the urban expansion. Thus, it is desirable to promote the LULC approach, in combination with an in-depth analysis of ‘syndromes’, as to disseminate its potential in order to improve the understanding and the comparison of measurable outcomes of SD in the Mediterranean basin.

The diagnostic value of the approach proposed in the present contribution is that spatially explicit SD processes are reflected into LULC trajectories and highlighted as specific environmental syndromes. This will be a valuable basis for the valuation of the ecosystem services as well as for implementing sustainable land management practices and restoration actions against desertification also addressing the UNCCD guidelines for the identification of SD measurable outcomes.

Acknowledgments

The present study was carried out under the partial support of the UE LIFE financial instrument (LIFE18 PRE IT 003) project VEG-GAP “Vegetation for Urban Green Air Quality Plans”.

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Biographies

Barbara Ermini is a Researcher in Applied Economics at the Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy. She holds a PhD in Economics from University of Pavia, Italy. She is author of books, book chapters and numerous articles related to Regional and Urban Economics; Industrial Economics; Education and Labour Economics; Well-Being Economics and Fiscal Federalism and Local Public Finance.

Marcela Prokopová graduated from the Mendel University of Forestry and Agriculture in Brno (Czech Republic) in 2001 in “Landscape Design” and received her PhD in 2011 from the University of South Bohemia in Česk Budějovice in “Applied Ecology”. She completed one semester of her studies focusing on global ecosystem processes in Sweden at Lund University. After working for Czech Ecological Institute for two years, where she contributed to the development of habitat assessment methods, she worked as a PhD student first at the Institute of System Biology and Ecology and later at Czech Globe, Global Change Research Institute for Czech Academy of Science. She has also conducted research at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in st nad Labem, where she worked on ecosystem services valuation. She is currently working as a full-time researcher at Czech Globe, Global Change Research Institute of Czech Academy of Science focusing on quantification of ecosystem functions, risk assessment of land degradation and ecological stability of landscapes in agricultural and urban environments.

Adriano Conte, graduated in “EcoBiology” at the at the University of Rome (Italy) “La Sapienza” in 2015 and PhD in “Science, Technologies and Biotechnologies for Sustainability” at the University of Tuscia (Viterbo, Italy) in 2019, currently works as technician at the Council for Research in Agriculture and the Analysis of Agricultural Economics (CREA). He has carried out a research period abroad as a “visiting researcher” at the Lancaster Environmental Centre (LEC), university of Lancaster (UK) in 2018. He has a background and expertise in forest ecology, micrometeorology and modeling plant processes.

Antonio Tomao, graduated in “Forestry and Environmental Sciences” at the University of Tuscia (Viterbo, Italy) in 2011 and PhD in “Landscape and environment design management and planning” at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 2015, currently holds the role of fixed term researcher at the Council for Research in Agriculture and the Analysis of Agricultural Economics (CREA). He is also adjunct professor of “urban and territorial planning” course at the Department of Economics and Law of the University of Macerata. Since 2011, he has been a collaborator in research activities and subsequently a research fellow (in role until 2021) at the Department for Innovation in Biological, Agro-food and Forest systems (DIBAF) of the University of Tuscia. He has carried out research periods abroad as a “visiting researcher” at the Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC) in Spain in the 2015 and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Department of Forest Ecology and Management in Sweden, in the 2019. He has a background and expertise in geomatics applications to environmental monitoring, urban forest risk assessment, urban planning, regional planning and green infrastructure planning.

Strategic Planning for Energy and the Environment, Vol. 40_1, 1–24.
doi: 10.13052/spee1048-5236.4011
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