0000000000014432
AUTHOR
Edoardo A.c. Costantini
Physiography of the Sicilian region (1:250,000 scale)
Physiographic maps summarize and group the landforms of a territory into homogeneous areas in terms of kind and intensity of the main geomorphological process. These maps are often produced at semi-detailed scales, while examples at the regional scale are much less common. However, because the region is the main administrative level in Europe, physiographic maps can be very useful for land planning in many fields, such as ecological studies, risk maps, and soil mapping. This work presents a methodological example of a regional physiographic map, compiled at a 1:250,000 scale, representing the whole Sicilian region, the largest of the Mediterranean islands. The physiographic units were class…
Factors Influencing Soil Organic Carbon Stock Variations in Italy During the Last Three Decades
Soils contain about three times the amount of carbon globally available in vegetation, and about twice the amount in the atmosphere. However, soil organic carbon (SOC) has been reduced in many areas, while an increase in atmospheric CO2 has been detected. Recent research works have shown that it is likely that past changes in land use history and land management were the main reasons for the loss of carbon rather than higher temperatures and changes of precipitation resulting from climate change. The primary scope of this work was to estimate soil organic carbon stock (CS) variations in Italy during the last three decades and to relate them to land use changes. The study was also aimed at f…
Comparing data mining and deterministic pedology to assess the frequency of WRB reference soil groups in the legend of small scale maps
Abstract The assessment of class frequency in soil map legends is affected by uncertainty, especially at small scales where generalization is greater. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that data mining techniques provide better estimation of class frequency than traditional deterministic pedology in a national soil map. In the 1:5,000,000 map of Italian soil regions, the soil classes are the WRB reference soil groups (RSGs). Different data mining techniques, namely neural networks, random forests, boosted tree, classification and regression tree, and supported vector machine (SVM), were tested and the last one gave the best RSG predictions using selected auxiliary variables a…
Using present and past climosequences to estimate soil organic carbon and related physical quality indicators under future climatic conditions
Abstract This research aimed at testing the use of present and past climosequences to estimate soil organic carbon (SOC) and related physical quality indicators under future climatic conditions. The influence of climate on soil features was studied for four combinations of typical Mediterranean soil types and cropping systems, placed along climosequences of the past (P1: 1961–1990), present (P2: 1981–2010) and future (P3: 2021–2050). The four test areas were located in Italy, each one characterized by the same soil typology and cropping system, placed on similar morphological position and parent material, wide enough to cross climatic boundaries. Legacy soil profiles that were sampled in th…
Assessing soil moisture regimes with traditional and new methods
Soil moisture regime classes are required by U.S. soil taxonomy and other classification systems. Soil moisture regimes are based on long-term daily data of soil water content, which are as a rule estimated by means of models. International Commitee on Soil Moisture and Temperature Regimes (ICOMMOTR) has proposed classifying pedoclimate on the basis of biweekly water potential. This study was conducted to validate the use of the Erosion-Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC) model in assessing soil water content of experimental fields placed in different European pedoclimatic conditions, to compare the pedoclimatic classification obtained with EPIC with those produced by the traditional Bill…
The contribution of the European Society for Soil Conservation (ESSC) to scientific knowledge, education and sustainability
Soil is an integral component of the global environmental system which supports the quality and diversity of terrestrial life on Earth. Therefore, it is vital to consider the processes and impacts of soil degradation on society, especially on the provision of environmental goods and services, including food security and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Scientific societies devoted to soil science play significant roles in reducing soil degradation and promoting soil conservation by advancing scientific knowledge, education and environmental sustainability. The ESSC was founded on 4 November 1988, with the aims to: 1. Support research on soil degradation, soil protection and soil an…
Using the ARP-03 for high-resolution mapping of calcic horizons
A b s t r a c t. The aim of this work is to present a fast and cheap method for high-resolution mapping of calcic horizons in vineyards based on geoelectrical proximal sensing. The study area, 45 ha located in southern Sicily (Italy), was characterized by an old, partially dismantled marine terrace and soils with a calcic horizon at different depths. The geoelectrical investigation consisted of a survey of the soil electrical resistivity recorded with the Automatic Resistivity Profiling-03 sensor. The electrical resistivity values at three pseudo-depths, 0-50, 0-100 and 0-170 cm, were spatialized by means of ordinary kriging. A principal component analysis of the three electrical resistivit…
The influence of climate change on the soil organic carbon content in Italy from 1961 to 2008
Abstract Soils are the biggest carbon store in the world (1500 Gt, e.g. 1.5 × 10 21 g). The European Commission indicates the accounting of soil organic carbon (SOC) variations in space and time as the first step in the strategy for soil protection. It is indeed necessary in evaluating the risk of soil organic matter decline and soil biodiversity decline, and when evaluating the role played by soils in global CO 2 accounting. Previous maps of SOC variations in Italy did not consider the direct effect of climate. There is a marked inter-dependence between SOC and climate. SOC increases with the increase in precipitations and decreases with a rise in temperatures. It is also known that land …