Search results for "Agriculture"
showing 10 items of 3315 documents
Land set-up systems in Italy: A long tradition of soil and water conservation sewed up to a variety of pedo-climatic environments
2020
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…
Economic performance and risk of farming systems specialized in perennial crops: An analysis of Italian hazelnut production
2019
Abstract Assessing farm profitability and economic risk is important to support farmers' decisions. Several factors affect yields and product prices, in turn influencing farmers' income level and economic risk. However, the literature has often neglected to explicitly account for the role of product quality. This is particularly important for crops such as hazelnut because farmers' prices vary according to the quality of the harvested product. Furthermore, it seems fundamental to disentangle the role of parameters influencing farm results, noticeably yield, product price and quality. This is because farmers select their risk management tools to satisfy their needs, but these are often suita…
From USSR to EU: 20 years of rural landscape changes in Vidzeme, Latvia
2012
Landscape changes have been observed throughout rural Europe over the past decades in relation to intensifying agriculture and land marginalisation. This is particularly true for Central and Eastern Europe as drastic political and socio-economic changes have taken place over the past century, as is the case for Latvia. Using a detailed time series of high-resolution remotely sensed images spanning from 1988 to 2007, the landscape structure (composition and configuration) in Vidzeme, central Latvia, is examined and compared between periods. Major recent events for the country, such as independence and entry into the European Union are covered. The effect on landscape structure of various soc…
2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility
2011
Climate variations influenced the agricultural productivity, health risk, and conflict level of preindustrial societies. Discrimination between environmental and anthropogenic impacts on past civilizations, however, remains difficult because of the paucity of high-resolution paleoclimatic evidence. We present tree ring-based reconstructions of central European summer precipitation and temperature variability over the past 2500 years. Recent warming is unprecedented, but modern hydroclimatic variations may have at times been exceeded in magnitude and duration. Wet and warm summers occurred during periods of Roman and medieval prosperity. Increased climate variability from similar to 250 to 6…
Dental wear at macro- and microscopic scale in rabbits fed diets of different abrasiveness: A pilot investigation
2020
To differentiate the effects of internal and external abrasives on tooth wear, we performed a controlled feeding experiment in rabbits fed diets of varying phytolith content as an internal abrasive and with addition of sand as an external abrasive. 13 rabbits were each fed one of the following four pelleted diets with different abrasive characteristics (no phytoliths: lucerne L; phytoliths: grass G; more phytoliths: grass and rice hulls GR; phytoliths plus external abrasives: grass, rice hulls and sand GRS) for two weeks. At the end the feeding period, three tooth wear proxies were applied to quantify wear on the cheek teeth at macroscopic and microscopic wear scales: CT scans were obtained…
Ancient DNA from European early neolithic farmers reveals their near eastern affinities.
2010
The first farmers from Central Europe reveal a genetic affinity to modern-day populations from the Near East and Anatolia, which suggests a significant demographic input from this area during the early Neolithic.
A 2500 year record of natural and anthropogenic soil erosion in South Greenland
2012
International audience; The environmental impact of the Norse landnám in Greenland has been studied extensively. But to date, no study has quantified the soil erosion that Norse agricultural practices are believed to have caused. To resolve this problem, a high resolution sedimentary record from Lake Igaliku in South Greenland is used to quantitatively reconstruct 2500 years of soil erosion driven by climate and historical land use. An accurate chronology allows for the estimation of detritic fluxes and their uncertainties. Land clearance and the introduction of grazing livestock by the Norse around 1010 AD caused an acceleration of soil erosion up to 8 mm/century in 1180 AD which is two-fo…
Priedaine: A Neolithic Site at the Head of the Gulf of Riga
2016
The Neolithic site of Priedaine in Jūrmala was excavated on a small scale in 2007–2008, yielding an assemblage of Comb Ceramics, along with unique wooden implements and fragments of pine-lath fishing structures. The environment and subsistence resources are indicated by plant macrofossil remains and a small faunal collection. Located by a palaeolake and also very close to the sea, the site, dated to c. 3700–3500 cal BC, would have been oriented towards aquatic resource exploitation. However, it had a wider range of functions, as indicated by the evidence of flint and amber processing. Key words: Neolithic, pottery, fishing gear, plant macro-remains, faunal remains, lake, coastal settlement.…
A multi-isotope analysis of Neolithic human groups in the Yonne valley, Northern France: insights into dietary patterns and social structure
2019
With the arrival of the Neolithic to Europe, new ways of life and new subsistence strategies emerged. In the Paris Basin (northern France), the appearance of some monumental funerary structures during the Middle Neolithic highlights in particular the increasing complexity of the social organisation. At the same time, several sites, such as open-air cemeteries, do not display any evidence of such arrangement. In the southeast of this area, the two primary routes of neolithisation meet. Several funerary parameters attest to the diverse influence received from other surrounding cultures. In order to assess potential differences in diet, and therefore on purported social distinctions at the int…
Changing Plant-based Subsistence Practices among Early and Middle Holocene Communities in Eastern Maghreb
2020
The eastern Maghreb is a key area for understanding environmental and cultural dynamics during the early and middle Holocene. Capsian populations from around 10000–7500 cal BP were among the last foragers in the region. Capsian sites are known as escargotières (land shell middens), and locally called rammadiyat (meaning ashy mound). As taphonomic conditions in Capsian open-air sites generally favour the preservation of resistant materials such as shells and bones rather than fragile plant remains, this study integrates macro-botanical and microfossil evidence from phytoliths, calcitic wood ash pseudomorphs and dung spherulites, since each is influenced by different formation and post-deposi…