guidelines for the design of a healing garden for the rehabilitation of psychiatric patients

Healing gardens are green spaces designed to promote and improve health and well-being for people suffering from illness. This paper proposes a methodology for defining a master plan for healing gardens. The methodology is based on site analysis (identification, limitations and potentials of the area) and the evaluation of user needs (patients, staff, relatives). The aim of the master plan is to provide guidelines for the definition of the executive plan, and to set up a sufficiently flexible project suitable for future new categories of patients, according to the different needs of the regional health authorities. The methodology has been applied to a case study: this paper considers the design of the healing garden of a building named Villa Bianca, part of the wider complex of the clinic for mental disorders Villa di Salute located in Trofarello (in the province of Turin, Piedmont, Italy). The main kinds of disturbances treated at Villa di Salute are schizophrenia and personality disorders; there are also some patients with severe depression. At the present time the building and the garden of Villa Bianca are not being used and are undergoing renovation

Global and Regional IUCN Red List Assessments: 2

In this contribution the conservation status assessment of six plant species according to IUCN categories and criteria are presented. It includes the assessment at global level of Charybdis glaucophylla Bacch., Brullo, D’Emerico, Pontec. & Salmeri, Euphorbia nicaeensis All. subsp. japygica (Ten.) Arcang., Hieracium australe Fr. subsp. australe, Limonium multiforme Pignatti, Onosma helvetica Boiss. em. Teppner subsp. lucana (Lacaita) Peruzzi, Aquaro & Cesca and the assessment at national level (Italy) of Lathyrus laxiflorus (Desf.) Kuntze subsp. laxiflorus

Red Listing plants under full national responsibility: Extinction risk and threats in the vascular flora endemic to Italy

Taxa endemic to a country are key elements for setting national conservation priorities and for driving conservation strategies, since their persistence is entirely dependent on national policy. We applied the IUCN Red List categories to all Italian endemic vascular plants (1340 taxa) to assess their current risk of extinction and to highlight their major threats. Our results revealed that six taxa are already extinct and that 22.4% (300 taxa) are threatened with extinction, while 18.4% (247; especially belonging to apomictic groups) have been categorized as Data Deficient. Italian endemic vascular plants are primarily threatened by natural habitat modification due to agriculture, residential and tourism development. Taxa occurring in coastal areas and lowlands, where anthropogenic impacts and habitat destruction are concentrated, display the greatest population decline and extinction. The national network of protected areas could be considered effective in protecting endemic-rich areas (ERAs) and endemic taxa, but ineffective in protecting narrow endemic-rich areas (NERAs), accordingly changes to the existing network may increase the effectiveness of protection. For the first time in the Mediterranean Basin biodiversity hotspot, we present a comprehensive extinction assessment for endemic plants under the full responsibility of a single country. This would provide an important step towards the prioritization and conservation of threatened endemic flora at Italian, European, and Mediterranean level. A successful conservation strategy of the Italian endemic vascular flora should implement the protected area system, solve some taxonomical criticism in poorly known genera, and should rely on monitoring threatened species, and on developing species-specific action plans

Lista bibliografica

Questa lista bibliografica contiene il secondo aggiornamento della bibliografia della Lisy e deriva dall’assemblaggio da parte della redazione (M. Serdoz ed E. Panfili) dei contributi parziali stilati dai gruppi regionali

Teaching and Learning Landscape Ecology to Landscape Architects in Italy. Toward protective, adaptative, redundant Landscape Design

This paper provides a complete picture of the teachings related to the Landscape Ecology in the master's degree courses of Landscape Architecture, in the Italian Universities, highlighting any absences and inadequacies. Only master's degree courses have been considered, because they are actually the only educational training to the full profession of the Landscape Architect in Italy. Landscape Ecology is a fundamental discipline to understand the multi-dimensional complexity and the evolutionary trends of landscape, necessary to guide and to enrich the projecting process, adding quality control elements in landscape planning or design

Validating the Contribution of Nature-Based Farming Solutions (NBFS) to Agrobiodiversity Values through a Multi-Scale Landscape Approach

Nature-Based Farming Solutions (NBFS) are envisaged practices that still strongly demand further context-specific scientific validation for their viable deployment at the local scale. In this context, our study deals with the test of a multi-scale system of landscape ecology indicators, interpreted as surrogates for the accounting of the contributions of NBFS to agrobiodiversity values and to the consequent environmental stability and resilience capacities of agroecosystems, recognized as pivotal for facing the ongoing climate change challenges. We here present the preliminary results obtained in a first pilot case study (Po Plain context). Landscape ecology analyses were undertaken at extra-local, local, and farm scales (with different levels of analytical detail), comparing the pilot farm to the surrounding conventionally managed context. A set of structural and functional indicators were tested, allowing a preliminary screening of the most suitable ones (good sensitivity to treatment changes, informative potential). Results suggested a multi-faceted positive contribution given by NBFS implementation and were the basis for orienting further NBFS implementation strategies based on vulnerability and resilience properties analysis. Further investigations are envisaged on wider datasets coming from other pilot case studies belonging to similar pedo-climatic conditions, in order to improve the informative potential of the here presented methodology