Towards the identification and mapping of traditional agricultural landscapes at the national scale: an inventory approach from Italy

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an original approach for identifying and mapping agricultural landscapes that are highly representative of different biogeographical and natural settings and likely to be traditional, at the national scale. In the case study of Italy, we used national land cover data of different dates to examine composition of agricultural types and their persistence over time while we employed national stratifications into ecoregions and potential natural vegetation (PNV) to include environmental representativeness. Implementing the procedure returned 120 landscapes, which are distributed across all ecoregions and 51% of the PNV types. Most landscapes match areas with certified and traditional produce (93%) and relevant potential vegetation (86%), whereas 30% overlap acknowledged historical rural landscapes. These results show that our approach highlights the coevolutionary process between traditional crops and the underlying environmental framework and, therefore, provides an ecologically sound coarse filter for selecting and mapping traditional agricultural landscapes.

KEYWORDS:

• Agricultural landscapes
• long-term persistence
• environmental representativeness
• ecoregions
• potential natural vegetation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Ministry of Education, University and Research (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca) through the co-funded Project of National Interest “Traditional agricultural landscapes in Italy: multi-disciplinary and multi-scale assessment for the development of an integrated model for landscape planning and management” under grant number 2010LE4NBM.

Notes on contributors

Laura Zavattero

Laura Zavattero, PhD, works as a consultant in the Department of Environmental Biology at Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). She was a research assistant in the Department up to 2019 and has been involved in several applied research projects including the national Red List of ecosystems, mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (WG MAES), planning of green infrastructures at national and regional scale. Her interests focus on landscape ecology and environmental planning (pattern analysis, ecological networks, ecological land classification).

Raffaella Frondoni

Raffaella Frondoni, PhD, is a research technician in the Department of Environmental Biology at Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), with a MPhil in GIS and Remote sensing from the University of Cambridge (UK). She works in the field of landscape ecology and biodiversity conservation and provides expertise for vegetation surveys and monitoring and for data mapping and analysis in GIS environments, with special focus on biodiversity assessment (plant species and communities) and land cover change.

Giulia Capotorti

Giulia Capotorti, PhD, is a researcher in the Department of Environmental Biology at Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), with special interest in ecological land classification, ecological assessment, monitoring and conservation of plant diversity at species, community and ecosystem levels. Since 2014, she is actively involved in the national implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy and joined the EC Working Groups on Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (WG MAES) and on Green Infrastructure Implementation and Restoration (WG GIIR).

Riccardo Copiz

Riccardo Copiz, PhD, works as a consultant in the Ministry for Ecological Transition (former Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea Protection) of Italy. He has been research assistant in the Department of Environmental Biology at Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) up to 2020. His interests focus on biodiversity conservation and environmental planning, with special regard to European and national policies. He has been involved in applied research projects such as the national Red List of ecosystems and the natural capital assessment.

Carlo Blasi

Carlo Blasi is Emeritus Professor in Plant Ecology at Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), with research interests in plant sociology and environmental planning. He is Scientific Director of the Interuniversity Research Centre ‘Biodiversity, Ecosystem services and Sustainability (CIRBISES)’, President of the Foundation for the Italian Flora of the Italian Botanical Society and appointed member of the National Observatory on Biodiversity, of the Committee for Green Public Development and of the Italian Natural Capital Committee (on behalf of the former Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea Protection of Italy, now Ministry for Ecological Transition).