0000000000118217
AUTHOR
Giuseppe Corti
Improving soil and water conservation and ecosystem services by sustainable soil management practices: From a global to an Italian soil partnership
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) identify the need to restore degraded soils in order to improve productivity and the provision of ecosystem services. The aim is to support food production, store and supply clean water, conserve biodiversity, sequester carbon, and improve soil resilience in a context of climate change. Within this framework, in order to achieve the SDGs and to correct land management in the long-term, soil management is considered mandatory. The reduction of land degradation should be based on various sustainable soil management practices that improve and maintain soil organic matter levels, increase water infiltration, and improve soil water management. This tec…
ATTIVITA’ ENZIMATICA NEI SUOLI DELLE SALINE DI TRAPANI E PACECO
Su oltre 80 campioni di suolo costituenti i diversi orizzonti dei suoli prelevati nelle saline di Trapani e Paceco sono state determinate 18 attività enzimatiche idrolasiche e il contenuto di dsDNA.
Role of land set-up systems on soil (physicochemical) conditions
Land reclamation and drainage networks represent one of the most ancient human modifications of the Italian soilscape, where tailored land set-up systems were developed in agro- and forestecosystems in three millennia of man’s activity. Most of once manually maintained land settings are currently scarcely working or even disappeared because of the cost needed for their maintenance and the advent of mechanization that have simplified the field organization. The scarce attention to the soil experienced in the last decades, has accelerated soil erosion and flooding events, which entailed high costs in terms of money and human lives, but also caused reduction of soil thickness, water holding ca…
Segregated ice and liquefaction effects on compaction of fragipans
The brittleness of fragipans is generally ascribed to the close-packing fabric arrangement acquired at the initial step of pedogenesis thanks to physical processes. However, there is an on-going debate over the agent causing soil densification. In this work, we tested the plausibility that ice segregation or liquefaction could have been the cause of the compaction of four fragipans. Two of them are located in nonseismic areas that have experienced periglacial conditions; one is from a strongly seismic area not affected by periglacial conditions, while the fourth site underwent moderate seismic activity and slight periglacial conditions. After disaggregation in the laboratory, soil specimens…
Land set-up systems in Italy: A long tradition of soil and water conservation sewed up to a variety of pedo-climatic environments
Land set-up systems in Italy were and, in a few cases, still are integral parts of agricultural landscapes. The soils of Italy mirror a wide variety of climates and morphologies and derive from a great diversity of parent materials influenced by different soil temperature and moisture regimes. Furthermore, their development was influenced by several anthropogenic activities over time including land settings. Land set-up systems have been widely used throughout the Italian soilscape to regulate surface and underground water and to improve the physical soil features in a way that ensures mixed herbaceous and tree-crops cultivation. In recent times, new technologies have been introduced in agr…