GIScience and Historical Cartography for Evaluating Land Use Changes and Resulting Effects on Carbon Balance

Multi-chronological examination of territory using GIScience and historical cartography may reveal a strategic tool for investigating changes in land use and the surrounding landscape structure. In this framework, the soil plays a key role in ecosystem evolution, since it governs all the mechanisms at the basis of vegetal growth, as well as all components of the total environment contributing to the formation of a rural landscape, including the balance of carbon dioxide. The present study was developed using a GIS approach applied to historical maps and aims to assess the environmental impact of land-use change, with particular attention to its effects on agricultural soil and atmospheric carbon dioxide balance. Thanks to a comparison between historical cartographic maps of different periods, this geospatial approach has enabled the assessment of the evolution of the rural land of the study area in the municipality of Ruoti (Basilicata Region—Southern Italy). This area, indeed, has been affected by deep land-use transformations, mainly caused by agricultural activities, with a resulting impact on the atmospheric CO2 balance. These transformations have been analyzed and quantified in order to contribute to the understanding on how the changes in land use for agricultural purposes have led to unforeseen changes in the rural landscape, ecosystems and the environment. The results showed that the greatest changes in land use were caused by the abandonment of large rural areas, resulting in the expansion of urban areas, a decrease in orchard and arable land (about less 25%), and an increase in woodland (more than 30%). These changes have resulted in a doubling in soil carbon fixation value. The final results have therefore confirmed that historical cartography within a GIS approach may decisively offer information useful for more sustainable agricultural activities, so as to reduce their negative contribution to climate change

The New Nature Writing

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. In the last decade there has been a proliferation of landscape writing in Britain and Ireland, often referred to as ‘The New Nature Writing’. Rooted in the work of an older generation of environment-focused authors and activists, this new form is both stylistically innovative and mindful of ecology and conservation practice. The New Nature Writing: Rethinking the Literature of Place connects these two generations to show that the contemporary energy around the cultures of landscape and place is the outcome of a long-standing relationship between environmentalism and the arts. Drawing on original interviews with authors, archival research, and scholarly work in the fields of literary geographies, ecocriticism and archipelagic criticism, the book covers the work of such writers as Robert Macfarlane, Richard Mabey, Tim Robinson and Alice Oswald. Examining the ways in which these authors have engaged with a wide range of different environments, from the edgelands to island spaces, Jos Smith reveals how they recreate a resourceful and dynamic sense of localism in rebellion against the homogenising growth of “clone town Britain.

The New Nature Writing

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. In the last decade there has been a proliferation of landscape writing in Britain and Ireland, often referred to as ‘The New Nature Writing’. Rooted in the work of an older generation of environment-focused authors and activists, this new form is both stylistically innovative and mindful of ecology and conservation practice. The New Nature Writing: Rethinking the Literature of Place connects these two generations to show that the contemporary energy around the cultures of landscape and place is the outcome of a long-standing relationship between environmentalism and the arts. Drawing on original interviews with authors, archival research, and scholarly work in the fields of literary geographies, ecocriticism and archipelagic criticism, the book covers the work of such writers as Robert Macfarlane, Richard Mabey, Tim Robinson and Alice Oswald. Examining the ways in which these authors have engaged with a wide range of different environments, from the edgelands to island spaces, Jos Smith reveals how they recreate a resourceful and dynamic sense of localism in rebellion against the homogenising growth of “clone town Britain.

The visualization of perspective systems and iconology in Dürer’s cartographic works : an in-depth analysis using multiple methodological approaches

This dissertation uses a new methodological approach for an in-depth analysis of three cartographic works. Studies within the discipline of the history of cartography have followed various methodologies throughout the past century. This dissertation argues that in order to come to a more complete understanding of how maps were produced and viewed throughout history, it is necessary to study their geographical and scholastic context on a variety of scales: their modes of production, the city in which they were produced, the surrounding academic community responsible for the content, the vernacular and academic viewers at the time, and how the maps would be been received both at the time of their dissemination and subsequently. Albrecht Dürer produced one terrestrial and two celestial maps in the early sixteenth century under the patronage of the Emperor Maximilian I, which were co-authored by Johannes Stabius and Conrad Heinfogel. Despite the collaborative nature of these maps, Dürer’s influence pertaining to the final visualizations is substantial enough to warrant the majority of focus in this dissertation. Widely esteemed during the Renaissance and in later periods throughout all of Western Europe, Dürer is best known for his copperplate and woodcut engravings. The Northern artistic trend of artistic realism and the Italian one-point perspective system were combined in Dürer’s terrestrial map, resulting in a visualization of his artistic theory of perspective. This highlights the theme of my dissertation, which is the integral nature of artistic and scientific forces in Renaissance maps. Dürer’s experimentation with projection, unfortunately, was too subtle for contemporary audiences, who could not visualize the distinctions between his projection system and Ptolemy’s. I attribute this as the main reason to why his terrestrial map was never printed. His celestial maps were printed multiple times and disseminated throughout Europe. These were novel for the sixteenth century, combining accuracy of star-placement with classical constellation figures. Dürer’s cartographic works demonstrate an innovativeness with form and representation. His fame as both a practical and theoretical artist justifies a closer examination of his influence on subsequent cartographic works