The interplay of landscape composition and configuration: new pathways to manage functional biodiversity and agroecosystem services across Europe

Managing agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity and ecosystem services is a key aim of a sustainable agriculture. However, how the spatial arrangement of crop fields and other habitats in landscapes impacts arthropods and their functions is poorly known. Synthesising data from 49 studies (1515 landscapes) across Europe, we examined effects of landscape composition (% habitats) and configuration (edge density) on arthropods in fields and their margins, pest control, pollination and yields. Configuration effects interacted with the proportions of crop and non‐crop habitats, and species’ dietary, dispersal and overwintering traits led to contrasting responses to landscape variables. Overall, however, in landscapes with high edge density, 70% of pollinator and 44% of natural enemy species reached highest abundances and pollination and pest control improved 1.7‐ and 1.4‐fold respectively. Arable‐dominated landscapes with high edge densities achieved high yields. This suggests that enhancing edge density in European agroecosystems can promote functional biodiversity and yield‐enhancing ecosystem services

Internet of things

Manual of Digital Earth / Editors: Huadong Guo, Michael F. Goodchild, Alessandro Annoni .- Springer, 2020 .- ISBN: 978-981-32-9915-3Digital Earth was born with the aim of replicating the real world within the digital world. Many efforts have been made to observe and sense the Earth, both from space (remote sensing) and by using in situ sensors. Focusing on the latter, advances in Digital Earth have established vital bridges to exploit these sensors and their networks by taking location as a key element. The current era of connectivity envisions that everything is connected to everything. The concept of the Internet of Things(IoT)emergedasaholisticproposaltoenableanecosystemofvaried,heterogeneous networked objects and devices to speak to and interact with each other. To make the IoT ecosystem a reality, it is necessary to understand the electronic components, communication protocols, real-time analysis techniques, and the location of the objects and devices. The IoT ecosystem and the Digital Earth (DE) jointly form interrelated infrastructures for addressing today’s pressing issues and complex challenges. In this chapter, we explore the synergies and frictions in establishing an efficient and permanent collaboration between the two infrastructures, in order to adequately address multidisciplinary and increasingly complex real-world problems. Although there are still some pending issues, the identified synergies generate optimism for a true collaboration between the Internet of Things and the Digital Earth

Correlating densities of centrality and activities in cities : the cases of Bologna (IT) and Barcelona (ES)

This paper examines the relationship between street centrality and densities of commercial and service activities in cities. The aim is to verify whether a correlation exists and whether some 'secondary' activities, i.e. those scarcely specialized oriented to the general public and ordinary daily life, are more linked to street centrality than others. The metropolitan area of Barcelona (Spain) is investigated, and results are compared with those found in a previous work on the city of Bologna (Italy). Street centrality is calibrated in a multiple centrality assessment (MCA) model composed of multiple measures such as closeness, betweenness and straightness. Kernel density estimation (KDE) is used to transform data sets of centrality and activities to one scale unit for correlation analysis between them. Results indicate that retail and service activities in both Bologna and Barcelona tend to concentrate in areas with better centralities, and that secondary activities exhibit a higher correlation