Search results for "PLANNING"
showing 10 items of 4026 documents
Tropical Fruits as an Opportunity for Sustainable Development in Rural Areas: The Case of Mango in Small-Sized Sicilian Farms
2018
Over the last decades, in many rural areas in Southern Europe, farmers have abandoned agricultural activity, especially on small-sized farms, leading to an exodus from rural areas towards urbanized ones. In this context, in the early 1980s, some Sicilian farmers introduced mango on their small-sized farms, as certain areas of Sicily are well suited to tropical and subtropical crops, but also to meet increasing consumer interest for these fruits, as they are perceived as functional foods. This paper aimed to evaluate the economic sustainability of mango and to determine whether its introduction could be considered as an alternative to traditional crops. In particular, an economic-financial a…
A fungal perspective on conservation biology
2014
Hitherto fungi have rarely been considered in conservation biology, but this is changing as the field moves from addressing single species issues to an integrative ecosystem-based approach. The current emphasis on biodiversity as a provider of ecosystem services throws the spotlight on the vast diversity of fungi, their crucial roles in terrestrial ecosystems, and the benefits of considering fungi in concert with animals and plants. We reviewed the role of fungi in ecosystems and composed an overview of the current state of conservation of fungi. There are 5 areas in which fungi can be readily integrated into conservation: as providers of habitats and processes important for other organisms…
Differential recovery of habitat use by birds after wind farm installation: A multi-year comparison
2017
Abstract Onshore wind farms remain one of the most widely used technologies for the production of renewable energy. These are known to affect birds through disturbance or collision. Most research focus on the impact of wind farms on raptors or other large bird species, especially those of conservation concern. However, limited information exists on the effect of wind farms on small birds. Recovery of large versus small bird populations impacted by wind farms is also largely unstudied. A reason for this is the lack of long-term datasets based on standardized, systematic assessments. We monitored birds in the vicinity of a wind farm in an upland habitat in southern Spain (Malaga province), im…
Disintegration of Italian rural landscapes to international environmental agreements
2015
In Italy, the first law that puts landscape and historical buildings under public control was implemented in 1922. While this represents a significant achievement for those times, for that law landscape essentially has an historical and aesthetic connotation, without any explicit reference to the components of flora, fauna and geology. Today, many protection policies and initiatives are still biased by the lack of reference to the intrinsic value that biodiversity and ecosystem services have for the maintenance of traditional landscapes, as well as for the survival of the human species. The priority accorded to historical and aesthetic values can lead to a lack of attention to the complex r…
Integrating fishing spatial patterns and strategies to improve high sea fisheries management
2018
Fishing activity in waters beyond national jurisdiction generates multiple management issues, such as data poor fisheries, management of straddling fish stocks and lack of impact assessments on deep-sea Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs). Fishing strategy is the key to understanding and managing high seas fisheries, targeting highly migratory resources that are widely distributed. An international fleet, including Spanish flag bottom trawlers, operates along the Patagonian shelf in Southwest Atlantic waters, which includes an unregulated strip of continental shelf beyond national jurisdiction. The Spanish fleet’s fishing strategy was analyzed, and based on on-board observer data collected …
Designer ecosystems : A solution for the conservation-exploitation dilemma
2016
Increase in human population is accelerating the rate of land use change, biodiversity loss and habitat degradation, triggering a serious threat to life supporting ecosystem services. Existing strategies for biological conservation remain insufficient to achieve a sustainable human-nature relationship and this situation has fueled a debate on the conservation-exploitation dilemma. We need to devise novel strategies, in a mutually inclusive way, which can support biological conservation and secure economic development of deprived populations. Here we propose the use of designer ecosystems which can ensure ecological sustainability while providing ample and some new means of livelihood to loc…
Water Status and Yield Response to Deficit Irrigation and Fertilization of Three Olive Oil Cultivars under the Semi-Arid Conditions of Tunisia
2019
Sustainability of olive production is possible by adopting the modern techniques of irrigation and fertilization. In Tunisia, olive trees are usually cultivated in poor soils, under semi-arid conditions characterized by water scarcity. This study investigated the effects of different water supply and fertilization on leaf water status and crop yield of three different olive oil varieties cultivated in central Tunisia, during four experimental seasons (2014&ndash
Guidelines for risk management in forest planning – what is risk and when is risk management useful?
2018
Managing forest resources occurs under various sources of uncertainty. Depending on the management problem, this uncertainty may have a substantial impact on the quality of the solution. As our knowledge on the sources and magnitude of uncertainty improves, integrating this knowledge into the development of management plans becomes increasingly useful, as additional information can improve the decision-making process. This adjustment requires a fundamental shift in how planning problems are viewed: instead of interpreting risk management as a technique needed only for addressing problems with natural hazards, risk management should be an integral part of most planning problems. Managing ri…
Value of information in multiple criteria decision making: an application to forest conservation
2019
Abstract Developing environmental conservation plans involves assessing trade-offs between the benefits and costs of conservation. The benefits of conservation can be established with ecological inventories or estimated based on previously collected information. Conducting ecological inventories can be costly, and the additional information may not justify these costs. To clarify the value of these inventories, we investigate the multiple criteria value of information associated with the acquisition of improved ecological data. This information can be useful when informing the decision maker to acquire better information. We extend the concept of the value of information to a multiple crite…
Potential of using data assimilation to support forest planning
2017
Uncertainty in forest information typically results in economic and ecological losses as a consequence of suboptimal management decisions. Several techniques have been proposed to handle such uncertainties. However, these techniques are often complex and costly. Data assimilation (DA) has recently been advocated as a tool that may reduce the uncertainty, thereby improving the quality of forest planning results. It offers an opportunity to make use of all new sources of information in a systematic way and thus provides more accurate and up-to-date information to forest planning. In this study, we refer to literature on handling uncertainties in forest planning, as well as related literature…