Search results for " VEGETATION"
showing 10 items of 435 documents
The Impact of Climate, Resource Availability, Natural Disturbances and Human Subsistence Strategies on Sicilian Landscape Dynamics During the Holocene
2022
This paper presents a multidisciplinary summary of the most recent discoveries and hypotheses concerning factors driving the human subsistence economy and landscape shaping in Sicily during the Holocene. A number of scientific papers have recently pointed out the key role played by paleogeography, resource (water, food) availability and natural disturbances (volcanic eruptions, tsunamis) in local human activities. Modern anthropology and archaeology increasingly use biological remains (e.g. soils, bones, wood, plant macroremains, pollen) to better understand how human communities managed to survive and spread. Likewise, refined reconstructions of past human demographic fluxes and socio-econ…
INFLUENCE OF POSIDONIA OCEANICA MEADOW DENSITY ON FLOW RESISTANCE IN SHALLOW WATERS
2008
Aquatic vegetation considerably affects circulation in water bodies with influence increasing as the depth decreases. On the other hand, increasing use of mathematical circulation models for management of coastal sea waters, lagoons and marshes requires determination of such effects and in particular of flow resistance. A typical plant of inshore sandy beds, less than 40 m deep, in the Mediterranean Sea is Posidonia oceanica, which is constituted by a tuft of very thin and flexible ribbon-like leaves about 1 cm wide and up to 1.5 m long. This plant forms meadows with areal density usually ranging between 500 and 1000 plants/m2. Because of its characteristics, Posidonia oceanica constitutes …
tRIBS-Erosion: combining mechanistic approaches for investigating eco-hydro-geomorphic response of river basins to climate change
2011
Vegetation interacts with hydrology, geomorphology and processes of a river basin in profound ways. Despite recent advances in hydrological modeling, the dynamic coupling between these processes is yet to be adequately captured at the basin scale to elucidate key features of process interaction and their role in the organization of vegetation and landscape morphology. In this study, a newly integrated geomorphic component of the physically-based, spatially distributed hydrological model, tRIBS, the TIN-based Real-time Integrated Basin Simulator, is presented. Hillslope and channel erosion processes are parsimoniously coupled with vegetation-hydrology dynamics, making it possible to study ho…
The use of vegetation for social housing renovations: A case study in the City of Palermo
2013
The paper shows the first results of a research carried out at the University of Palermo, which aims to indentify sustainable strategies for the renovation of social housing in the Mediterranean Basin, with focus on the use of vegetation as strategy for the enhancement of urban microclimate and thermal comfort. To achieve these goals the social housing complex of Medaglie d’Oro in the city of Palermo was chosen as case study in order to carry out some analyses for the assessment of outdoor comfort parameters of the area. By means of numerical simulations performed with the software ENVI-met, the actual state of the area was evaluated and four scenarios of renovation strategies through the i…
Il quartiere Cappuccinelli a Trapani: per un intervento di retrofit sostenibile attraverso l’uso della vegetazione
2018
La riduzione del consumo di energia primaria e delle emissioni di CO2 nell’aria sono due obiettivi chiave delle politiche internazionali, come dimostrato dagli standard sempre più restrittivi in tema di efficienza energetica degli edifici. Il settore edilizio è considerato, infatti, uno dei più importanti settori strategici al fine di raggiungere questi due obiettivi e per questa ragione le politiche energetiche a livello globale si stanno indirizzando sempre più nella promozione di strategie finalizzate alla regolamentazione della sua efficienza attraverso il progetto di edifici sostenibili. L’articolo intende dimostrare, tramite la presentazione di un caso studio, l’efficacia e la complem…
Green roofs for smart cities: experimental determination of the “fractional vegetation coverage” of six vegetated species
2015
Towards a de-carbonization of European countries, green roofs are becoming popular, due not only to aesthetic reasons but also to energy and environmental issues. Indeed, especially in summer periods, the building cooling demand might be sensibly cut thanks to such passive components often chosen for planning smart cities. To properly model the energy performances of buildings equipped with these components, a particular attention must be paid to radiative exchanges occurring among soil surface, leaves and outdoor surroundings. These thermal exchanges depend on parameters, like the “fractional vegetation coverage” whose literature data do not seem particularly suitable for the simulation ne…
Modeling the mechanical and hydrological controls of vegetation in shallow landslides
2014
First record of Carex vesicaria (Cyperaceae) in Sicily.
2004
The first record of Carex vesicaria from Sicily is reported. This circumboreal species, so far known from the peninsular regions of Italy and from Corsica, has been found in a marshy mead- ow within the Fagus sylvatica and Acer pseudoplatanus woody belt of the Nebrodi mountains (N-E Sicily). The phytocoenosis established in this locality is characterized by C. vesicaria itself together with a few other hygrophytes such as Galium elongatum, Mentha aquatica and Juncus effusus. This plant community belongs to a context of hygro-hydrophilous vegetation where marshy features characterized by Juncus striatus and Calliergonella cuspidata alternate with the lacustrine ones characterized by Potamoge…
Small-scale and high-resolution in geobotanical mapping: the case study of Sicily.
2017
Small-scale and high-resolution in geobotanical mapping: the case study of Sicily.