Exploring the global scientific literature on urban metabolism

Urban ecosystems can be conceptualized like living organisms supported by material and energy flows that allow the generation of ecosystem structures and functions and the production of goods and services. Urban metabolism accounts for the flows of materials, energy, resources, food, and people in cities, providing a framework for the study of the interactions between natural and socio-economic systems. In this paper, the global scientific literature on urban metabolism was explored to identify knowledge gaps and emerging research areas over the last decades. A bibliometric network analysis was implemented to generate maps based on network data of scientific publications displaying relationships among scientific journals, researchers, countries, and keywords. The total number of publications on urban metabolism from 1990 to 2019 resulted in 498 documents. USA and China resulted the first countries publishing on urban metabolism while among the journals, the Journal of Industrial Ecology and Journal of Cleaner Production resulted the first in the ranking. The co-occurrence network map of keywords showed that, over the last decade, the main focus of research on urban metabolism has shifted from environmental issues to environmental accounting and socio-economic aspects. Considering the importance of urban systems for the achievement of local and global sustainability goals, it is likely that the scientific literature on urban metabolism will continue growing over the next years. Being cities characterized by complex relationships between natural and socio-economic systems, it is desirable that future studies will explore the multidimensional features of urban metabolism through multi-criteria assessment frameworks

Assessing natural capital value in the network of Italian marine protected areas: a comparative approach

Marine and coastal natural capital stocks provide a bundle of ecosystem services vital for human well-being. The biophysical and economic assessment of the value of natural capital stocks is much needed for achieving nature conservation goals, while ensuring the sustainable exploitation of marine resources. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are increasingly being established worldwide to protect and conserve natural capital stocks from anthropogenic threats. In this study, a biophysical and trophodynamic model based on the emergy accounting method was used to assess the value of natural capital for a set of Italian MPAs. In particular, the assessment focused on four main macro-habitats: 1) sciaphilic hard bottom (SHB), 2) photophilic hard bottom (PHB), 3) soft bottom (SB), and 4) Posidonia oceanica seagrass beds (PSB). The emergy method allowed the assessment of natural capital stocks in terms of direct and indirect solar energy flows invested by nature for their generation. The SHB habitat showed the highest emergy density value in most of the investigated MPAs, confirming the high convergence of input resource flows in the formation of this habitat. When considering extensive indicators, the contribution of the PSB habitat to the total value of natural capital was higher than other habitats in most MPAs. In addition, to facilitate the understanding of the results in socio-economic contexts, the biophysical values of natural capital stocks were converted into monetary units. The total value of natural capital in the investigated MPAs ranged from about 8 to 1163 M€. In conclusion, assessing the value of natural capital can support local managers and policy makers in charge for achieving nature conservation targets while ensuring the sustainable exploitation of natural resources

The scientific literature on Posidonia oceanica meadows and related ecosystem services

Posidonia oceanica is an endemic seagrass of the Mediterranean Sea. It has recently raised particular interest for its key role in enhancing climate change mitigation. Actually, P. oceanica is one of the most important marine-coastal ecosystems able to sequester and store considerable quantities of carbon, thus being recognized as a “Coastal Blue Carbon System”. However, due to their coastal position, P. oceanica meadows are often subjected to intense human activities that affect their distribution, health and ecological condition, and the capability of generating ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration and storage. Therefore, it is important to identify strategies to protect P. oceanica meadows, also increasing the awareness on the value of the benefits they generate for human well-being. In this context, environmental accounting tools are much needed to assess the biophysical and economic value of the ecosystem services provided by P. oceanicameadows.  In this study we explored the scientific literature on P. oceanica, also investigating the relationships between “Posidonia oceanica” and “Ecosystem Services”. The VOSviewer software was used to create maps based on network data of scientific publications using specific keywords to explore the co-occurrence of different terms connected to the considered research topics. Results showed that the most common keywords in scientific publications on P. oceanica were “Biodiversity”, “Environmental monitoring”, and “Conservation”. The analysis on “Posidonia oceanica” and “Ecosystem Services” showed some gaps in terms of standardized approaches for the ecosystem accounting of P. oceanica meadows. Therefore, further efforts are needed to assess the value of ecosystem services generated by P. oceanica through standardized accounting frameworks making visible its contribution to human well-being at different levels of decision-making processes

Pressures and impacts on structure, functioning and services in marine, terrestrial, and transitional ecosystems

Goal of the special issue - Given this premise, the special issue will gather theoretical, methodological, and applied papers focusing on the assessment of pressures and impacts on structure, functioning and services in marine, terrestrial, and transitional ecosystem

Integrating environmental and socio-economic indicators to explore the sustainability of food patterns and food security in Lebanon

Abstract Food security is a complex issue whose comprehension requires multidisciplinary research exploring environmental, socio-economic, and policy aspects. World population is expected to continue increasing in the next decades. As a consequence, the global food demand is also expected to increase, exacerbating the contribution of food consumption and production patterns to environmental problems and climate change. In addition, the problem of socio-economic inequalities is also noteworthy, with a very high number of undernourished people at global level. Considering the complex nature of food security, the integration of environmental and socio-economic indicators is much needed for assessing its multiple dimensions. In this study, environmental and socio-economic indicators were assessed to explore the sustainability of food patterns and food security in Lebanon. Environmental indicators were calculated to assess the environmental costs and impacts of the Lebanese and refugee diets. All the environmental indicators calculated for the Lebanese diet resulted higher compared to the refugee diet. The overall contribution of the refugee diet to the investigated impact categories resulted in about 25%, confirming its significance in terms of direct and indirect natural resources consumption and environmental impacts. The socio-economic indicators showed that food security is a critical issue for the Lebanese population and, particularly, for the refugees living in Lebanon. In particular, 59% and 15% of Lebanese and refugee populations resulted having an adequate individual access to food. In conclusion, the outcomes of the study provide scientific information to support policy-makers and a benchmark for future studies aimed at improving food security in Lebanon

Trends and evolution in the concept of historical towns sustainability

The present study aims to review the scientific literature on sustainable towns by tracking its evolution and trends, with reference to the Sustainable Development Goals localization, and by applying social network analysis to bibliometric science. The bibliometric analysis, implemented over the timeframe 1996-2021, allowed the generation of maps based on network data displaying the relationships among scientific journals, researchers, and countries. Two different bibliometric analyses were performed to explore the scientific literature on “sustainable historical towns” and “sustainable towns’ assessment”. The results were useful to capture the multidimensional nature of sustainable towns by analyzing a large amount of literature data while identifying the main scientific patterns in this field of science. The paper is organized as follows. Sections 1 and 2 briefly introduce the topic and goal of the study. In section 3, the concept of “historical town” is defined by a qualitative and quantitative analysis. In section 4, governance issues related to small size municipalities are described with a focus on the inner peripheral areas.  In Section 5, a review of sustainable urban policy evolution at the global and European levels is presented. Section 6 illustrates the state of the art in sustainability assessment of towns, analyzing the main issues and advancements of SDGs localization in the European historical small and medium-sized towns and rural areas. Section 7 illustrates the methodology and results of the performed bibliometric network analysis. Finally, the main findings of the study and research perspectives are summarized in Section 8

Resource use and biophysical constraints of Scottish agriculture

Agriculture is a fundamental sector of economy and society that ensures food supply, classified by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment among the so-called “provisioning ecosystem services”. Due to the increase of food demand worldwide, farmers are shifting more and more towards intensive agriculture. This trend is connected to the unsustainable consumption of natural resources, most often exceeding the carrying capacity of natural ecosystems. In this paper, the resource use and biophysical constraints of Scottish agriculture were investigated at regional and national levels by means of the Emergy Synthesis method. The study focused on two main agroecosystems: 1) the Cairngorms National Park (CNP) and 2) the national agricultural sector of Scotland as a whole. The evolution of the agricultural sector was explored over time (years 1991, 2001, 2007), accounting for local renewable and non-renewable resources as well as imported resources. Performance and sustainability indicators were then calculated with and without including human labor and economic services (money flows). In the year 2007, the Emergy Yield Ratio (EYR) of the Scottish agricultural sector was about 46% of the same indicator calculated for the CNP (2.65 versus 5.72, respectively). A higher Environmental Loading Ratio (ELR) was calculated for the national sector than for CNP (1.25 versus 1.02, respectively). The Emergy Sustainability Index (ESI) was 2.12 for the national sector and 5.60 for CNP. Such figures were calculated without including the emergy flows supporting labor and services. If the latter are also accounted for, the ESI of the national level and CNP drop by a factor 5.6 and 3.9, respectively. Such variations suggest that larger flows of non-renewable resources strongly affect the environmental performance, increasing the dependence on non-renewable resources supporting the larger economic system in which the agricultural sectors are embedded in

A New Orbiting Deployable System for Small Satellite Observations for Ecology and Earth Observation

In this paper, we present several study cases focused on marine, oceanographic, and atmospheric environments, which would greatly benefit from the use of a deployable system for small satellite observations. As opposed to the large standard ones, small satellites have become an effective and affordable alternative access to space, owing to their lower costs, innovative design and technology, and higher revisiting times, when launched in a constellation configuration. One of the biggest challenges is created by the small satellite instrumentation working in the visible (VIS), infrared (IR), and microwave (MW) spectral ranges, for which the resolution of the acquired data depends on the physical dimension of the telescope and the antenna collecting the signal. In this respect, a deployable payload, fitting the limited size and mass imposed by the small satellite architecture, once unfolded in space, can reach performances similar to those of larger satellites. In this study, we show how ecology and Earth Observations can benefit from data acquired by small satellites, and how they can be further improved thanks to deployable payloads. We focus on DORA—Deployable Optics for Remote sensing Applications—in the VIS to TIR spectral range, and on a planned application in the MW spectral range, and we carry out a radiometric analysis to verify its performances for Earth Observation studies