Mapping and assessing soil sealing in Padua municipality through biotope area factor index

Soil sealing is a worldwide phenomenon of covering of natural or seminatural soil with impervious surfaces, such as built-up or paved surfaces. It is widely recognized as a major environmental issue which drives landscape fragmentation and ecosystem services degradation and loss. Italy is one of European countries with the highest extent of soil sealing. The most affected area is northern Italy, especially the Po Valley with more than 12% of sealed surfaces. According to official data, Veneto Region and the city of Padua are seriously affected by this phenomenon. The Biotope Area Factor is a consolidated ecological urban index for mapping soil sealing, adopted in different European cities to support urban planning; it expresses the ratio of the ecologically effective surface area in relation to the total land area according to land cover classes. The general aim of this study is to map and to assess soil sealing in the whole municipal territory of Padua using the Biotope Area Factor (BAF) index. We tested and adopted a digital land cover map together with aerial images to perform a BAF analysis on the whole municipal territory of Padua. By using sample areas previously analyzed, we validated our source data by a double spatial validation process; therefore, soil sealing analysis was scaled-up to the municipality territory. Results show that in the city of Padua, the average BAF index value is 0.6; totally permeable surfaces (BAF = 1) cover 59.5%, whereas totally "sealed" surfaces (BAF = 0) are 40.3% of the municipal territory (93 km2). Most of the sealed soil is located in the east sector and in the historical core of the city, with BAF values ranging from 0 to 0.2. A particularly critical area is identified within the new industrial area of the city, which is strongly affected by soil sealing. BAF maps are useful tools to identify critical areas by geovisualizing surface permeability at a very detailed scale and by enabling further analyses for hydrogeological risk assessment and urban climate regulation. Moreover, the use of BAF maps at urban scale today represent an important tool for urban management, especially for policy makers who are planning mitigation and compensation measures to control soil sealing

A Multi-scalar Green Infrastructure Project for the Landscape Enhancement and Regional Regeneration of Media and Alta Valtellina

In the process of updating the Lombardy Region's territorial and landscape planning tools, the Green Infrastructure has been defined as a strategic landscape infrastructure built based on the interpretation, assessment, and mapping of Ecosystem Services, with the aim of increasing their relative performance and, consequently, their Natural capital. The Regional Green Infrastructure is inspired by the European Commission's principles defined as a network of natural, rural, and anthropic landscape elements planned at a strategic level to improve human well-being. The Green Infrastructure design is multi-scale in that it allows both for the analysis of Ecosystem Services using the most appropriate functional and ecological scale, and for the formulation of strategies and objectives that can be taken up and systematised by the most appropriate planning and programming tools with respect to the scale of implementation. This paper describes the procedure for downscaling the project contents and design of the Lombardy Region's Green Infrastructure in the pilot area of Media and Alta Valtellina, as a fragile landscape context subjected to significant planning projects scheduled for the coming years. The Green Infrastructure downscaling procedure also becomes an opportunity to systematise and highlight the synergies among the various strategic and design-related components developed in support of the Lombard landscape planning tools

La progettazione multi-scalare di una infrastruttura verde: prime sperimentazioni in ambito montano

Green and blue infrastructures (GBI) represent a multi-scale and multi-function spatial organisation model promoting the integration of Ecosystem Services in territorial and landscape planning processes, fostering the design and implementation of strategic contents. Adopting a multi-scale approach allows for designing an Ecosystem service-based GBI defined at a proper ecological-functional scale identifying suitable goals and strategies for addressing planning and programming tools at their most suitable implementation scale. In updating territorial and landscape plans for the Lombardy region, a Regional Green Infrastructure (Rete Verde Regionale, RVR) was defined as a strategic landscape infrastructure based on Ecosystem services mapping and assessment aiming to improve their performance, defining strategies, actions and solutions for increasing Natural Capital and human-well-being. This contribution describes the process of downscaling RVR design and features in the pilot territorial context of “Media and Alta Valtellina”, a fragile mountain area affected by remarkable ongoing and future planning interventions

Field Pea in European Cropping Systems: Adaptability, Biological Nitrogen Fixation and Cultivation Practices

This article provides an overview of the production and use of field pea in European farming systems. Pea is cultivated in Europe for both human consumption and for animal feeding. For food, pea is consumed as dry seeds, green pods or green seeds (fresh, canned or frozen). Field pea is also used for animal feed. Pea production has declined in the region; however, interest in pea cultivation has recently revived. Pea production provides several agronomic advantages in the Mediterranean region supporting more sustainable cropping systems and reduced nitrogen fertiliser use. Furthermore, peas for animal feed partly substitute for the increasingly expensive imported soybean. In addition to describing the current situation of pea cultivation and the future perspectives, this article reports on the adaptability of pea in Europe, cropping techniques with emphasis on modern farming practices and varieties that make their cultivation more profitable and more attractive to growers, and the cropping systems that are commonly used for field pea production. The currently applied cropping practices in the region, including rotation, soil tillage practices, fertilisation, sowing and crop density, weed, pest and disease management, irrigation and harvesting, are outlined

An Operational Model to Downscale Regional Green Infrastructures in Supra-Local Plans: A Case Study in an Italian Alpine Sub-Region

In recent years, green infrastructure (GI) has increasingly become a strategic tool to integrate ecosystem services in spatial planning at different scales. GI has the potential to foster the achievement of environmental targets and landscape enhancement promoted by several planning instruments that act at different territorial scales. Despite this, the combination of the GI strategy with other ordinary plans is poorly investigated and developed due to the difficulty in making planning instruments dialoguing in a transversal approach. This paper presents a case study in an Italian alpine sub-region (Media and Alta Valtellina, Province of Sondrio) focused on a regional GI—defined by a landscape plan—used for testing a replicable methodology to downscale regional strategies by combining them with sub-regional environmental and landscape rules and recommendations derived from planning instruments. The aim is to create an organic connection between GI goals and other sub-regional planning instruments that would otherwise remain siloed within the hierarchical downscaling process of the top-down planning system. The result is the development of a comprehensive matrix that is useful for downscaling the strategies established by a regional landscape plan in sub-regional landscape units that relapse at the local scale; this is also achieved through GI deployment and the promotion of site-specific nature-based solutions

Yield performance of faba bean-wheat intercropping on spring and winter sowing in European organic farming systems

INTERCROP EU PROJECT studied Faba bean–Wheat intercropping at different growing condition on European organic farming systems. During 2003-2005 in spring and winter cropping season different intercropping series were evaluated in Denmark, Germany, Italy and United Kingdom . In this contribution are reported the experimental results on yield performance of one additive and one replace-ment intercropping series