Sostenibilità degli agrosistemi: valutazione attraverso l'uso di indicatori di telerilevamento a livello di paesaggio in Grecia

Agro-ecosystems are artificial landscape constituents created by man through the use of agriculture in order to produce a variety of commodities necessary for his sustenance and survival. Starting from the Neolithic era, agricultural ecosystems in the Mediterranean region and worldwide have had a complex interaction with natural ecosystems shaping rural landscapes for millennia. From an environmental point of view these interactions throughout history have been both positive and negative. In any case until the 18th century most human farming activities did not represent any significant impact or threat to the local environment and bio system sustainability mostly due to technology limitations and the population level. Nowadays however, in Greece, like elsewhere in the world, after the industrial and green revolution, the increasing capacity of modern man to alter the landscape in order to satisfy his needs for biomass, mobility, dwellings and energy has started to deeply modify land use and landscape patterns, destabilizing sustainability and compromising biodiversity. While it is undeniable that the green revolution and heavy industrialized agriculture have contributed to the increase of rural production and prosperity worldwide, the negative aspects of agricultural management, if not addressed, could hamper the sustainability of rural areas and therefore their capacity to meet present and future nutritional and socioeconomic needs. Based on all the problematic stated above, the objective of this research is to provide a useful tool in order to assess agro-ecosystem management at the territorial level, with the use of a selected core set of landscape metrics cross examined in relation with socioeconomic factors that could hopefully assist decision making in the promotion of agroecological and ecoregion sustainability. The study consists in the comparison of three different case study areas in Greece chosen in order to be the representative expressions of the Hellenic agriculture in different ruralities, where the overall policies and markets have to deal with the local specificity. The selected study areas were situated within the Hellenic Regional unit areas of Imathia, Larissa and Euboea. For the landscape analysis, remote sensing data has been collected (maps, aerial photographs), and elaborated using GIS and other specific software (i.e., Excel, Fragstats) linked with economic and social activities regarding land use. Based on the selected landscape metrics and socioeconomic data, the Municipal unit of Dovras presented the highest overall values of sustainability after the area of Messapia, and the highest productivity values among all the three ecoregions considered, where both ecological service areas and human productive forces coexist in the best environmentally friendly manner. The Larissa municipality presented the lowest overall values of agro-ecosystem sustainability, suggesting an agriculture that is oriented mostly in order to reduce production costs and increase income, where biodiversity and sustainability are possibly neglected. Finally regarding the study area of the municipal unit of Messapia, based on the selected landscape metrics and socioeconomic parameters, results showed the area with the highest values of agro- ecosystem sustainability but also as the less productive among the three. As an overall, all the ecoregions considered could further enhance agro-ecosystem sustainability at the landscape level with some simple and relatively low cost farming technics like the increment of bio-corridors. Finally, the observed combination of higher agro-ecosystem sustainability and productivity overall values of the Dovras ecoregion in respect to those of the Larissa ecoregion, could suggest a possible benevolent effect of sustainable agro-ecosystem management (at the landscape level) on farming productive output. However, further research is needed in order to confirm these results.Dottorato di ricerca in Scienze ambiental