T. Ceccarelli

Bio: T. Ceccarelli is an academic researcher from Wageningen University and Research Centre. The author has contributed to research in topics: Land degradation & Land use. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 29 publications receiving 563 citations. Previous affiliations of T. Ceccarelli include Consiglio per la ricerca e la sperimentazione in agricoltura & Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione.

Urbanisation and Land Take of High Quality Agricultural Soils - Exploring Long-term Land Use Changes and Land Capability in Northern Italy

Abstract: Urban expansion and agriculture intensification are relevant drivers in Land Degradation (LD) processes in Europe due to net loss of land, soil sealing, landscape fragmentation and other negative effects on the environment. This paper explores changes (or "trajectories" of change) in land use and cover (LULC) and their relationship with the consumption of soils in Emilia-Romagna (northern Italy) over a 55-years period from 1954 to 2008, and separately over three time periods (1954-1976, 1976-1994 and 1994-2008) characterized by distinctive processes of urban and agricultural development. Four high-resolution LULC maps for 1954, 1976, 1994, and 2008 were analysed together with a 1:50,000 scale land capability map used as an indicator of soil quality. Out of an investigated area of around 12.000 km 2 , 34% underwent changes in LULC over the entire study period. "Agriculture internal conversions" accounted for 46% of the changes and "urban expansion" for as much as 35%. The first period was characterized by "agriculture internal conversions" associated with intensification processes. In the second period internal agricultural conversions became even more important. In the third period the most relevant conversion process was agricultural extensivation, with urban expansion also becoming relevant. During the entire period, the area consumed by urban expansion took around 41 % of the high-quality soils. Other trajectories consumed soils of lower quality, with the exception of internal agricultural conversions (accounting for another 46%). The suggested approach can provide valuable indications for assessing quantity and quality of soils taken by urban expansion, thus orienting sustainable land management.

Integrating economic and environmental indicators in the assessment of desertification risk: a case study

Abstract: Desertification is a complex phenomenon which reduces the soil fertility involving ecological and economic processes that characterize the environment at different geographic scales. The most widely accepted definition of desertification is the one given by the United Nations Convention. It defines desertification as 'land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human actities'.Desertification involves many countries featuring different ecological, economic, and social conditions. In Mediterranean Europe, high human pressure, economic development, and climatic changes combine to produce land consumption, soil erosion, salinization, and fire risk, all considered as key factors to start desertification processes. For many years the term desertification has been strictly associated to geo-physical conditions, but in very complex ecosystems the study of the interaction of physical patterns with population and social characteristics is necessary to better delineate areas at risk. The aims of this paper are therefore (i) to review recent findings in term of desertification processes and risk assessment in the Mediterranean basin, (ii) to illustrate a simplified model in which social and economic variables may significantly accelerate land degradation leading to desertification, (iii) to suggest a set of demographic, economic, and institutional indicators suitable to contribute to the assessment of desertification risk in the Mediterranean basin, (iv) to built a synthetic index based on a multivariate approach and, finally, (v) to compare such index with a standard index of desertification risk only referring to geo-physical conditions. As a conclusion, new findings to be achieved in the context of human impact on environment as an original contribution to the study of desertification were delineated.

Italy's renewable water resources as estimated on the basis of the monthly water balance

Abstract: The International Programme for Technology and Research in Irrigation and Drainage (IPTRID) and the Italian National Committee of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ITAL–ICID) decided it would be worth extending a previous paper on Italy’s available water resources to a detailed study on the partitioning of precipitation between evaporation, groundwater storage (saturated and unsaturated zone) and runoff with the aim of estimating the potentially renewable water resources of the country. The information is gained through a water balance model approach, using monthly climate data from the time series 1971–2000 estimated over 544 grid points of the whole of the Italian territory, made available by the CRA–Central Office for Crop Ecology (CRA–UCEA). The goal of this study was to evaluate the fraction of precipitation that does not return to the atmosphere through the evaporation process or remains in soil storage and that includes both surface and subsurface runoff including effective infiltration. The results obtained by using a GIS system may provide useful information on the evolution of the hydroclimatic conditions in Italy and a picture of the runoff amounts in terms of time and space. This information can be used for national planning purposes and for activating strategies to protect and conserve water resources, especially with regard to irrigation management. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

On spatial prediction of soil properties in the presence of a spatial trend: The empirical best linear unbiased predictor (E-BLUP) with REML

Abstract: Geostatistical estimates of a soil property by kriging are equivalent to the best linear unbiased predictions (BLUPs). Universal kriging is BLUP with a fixed-effect model that is some linear function of spatial coordinates, or more generally a linear function of some other secondary predictor variable when it is called kriging with external drift. A problem in universal kriging is to find a spatial variance model for the random variation, since empirical variograms estimated from the data by method-of-moments will be affected by both the random variation and that variation represented by the fixed effects. The geostatistical model of spatial variation is a special case of the linear mixed model where our data are modelled as the additive combination of fixed effects (e.g. the unknown mean, coefficients of a trend model), random effects (the spatially dependent random variation in the geostatistical context) and independent random error (nugget variation in geostatistics). Statisticians use residual maximum likelihood (REML) to estimate variance parameters, i.e. to obtain the variogram in a geostatistical context. REML estimates are consistent (they converge in probability to the parameters that are estimated) with less bias than both maximum likelihood estimates and method-of-moment estimates obtained from residuals of a fitted trend. If the estimate of the random effects variance model is inserted into the BLUP we have the empirical BLUP or E-BLUP. Despite representing the state of the art for prediction from a linear mixed model in statistics, the REML-E-BLUP has not been widely used in soil science, and in most studies reported in the soils literature the variogram is estimated with methods that are seriously biased if the fixed-effect structure is more complex than just an unknown constant mean (ordinary kriging). In this paper we describe the REML-E-BLUP and illustrate the method with some data on soil water content that exhibit a pronounced spatial trend.

Identifying areas susceptible to desertification in the Brazilian northeast

Abstract: . Approximately 57% of the Brazilian northeast region is recognized as semi-arid land and has been undergoing intense land use processes in the last decades, which have resulted in severe degradation of its natural assets. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify the areas that are susceptible to desertification in this region based on the 11 influencing factors of desertification (pedology, geology, geomorphology, topography data, land use and land cover change, aridity index, livestock density, rural population density, fire hot spot density, human development index, conservation units) which were simulated for two different periods: 2000 and 2010. Each indicator were assigned weights ranging from 1 to 2 (representing the best and the worst conditions), representing classes indicating low, moderate and high susceptibility to desertification. The results indicate that 94% of the Brazilian northeast region is under moderate to high susceptibility to desertification. The areas that were susceptible to soil desertification increased by approximately 4.6% (83.4 km2) from 2000 to 2010. The implementation of the methodology provides the technical basis for decision-making that involves mitigating actions and the first comprehensive national assessment within the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification framework.