Stand age diversity (and more than climate change) affects forests' resilience and stability, although unevenly.

Stand age significantly influences the functioning of forest ecosystems by shaping structural and physiological plant traits, affecting water and carbon budgets. Forest age distribution is determined by the interplay of tree mortality and regeneration, influenced by both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Unfortunately, human-driven alteration of tree age distribution presents an underexplored avenue for enhancing forest stability and resilience. In our study, we investigated how age impacts the stability and resilience of the forest carbon budget under both current and future climate conditions. We employed a state-of-the-science biogeochemical, biophysical, validated process-based model on historically managed forest stands, projecting their future as undisturbed systems, i.e., left at their natural evolution with no management interventions (i.e., forests are left to develop undisturbed). Such a model, forced by climate data from five Earth System Models under four representative climate scenarios and one baseline scenario to disentangle the effect of climate change, spanned several age classes as representative of the current European forests' context, for each stand. Our findings indicate that Net Primary Production (NPP) peaks in the young and middle-aged classes (16- to 50-year-old), aligning with longstanding ecological theories, regardless of the climate scenario. Under climate change, the beech forest exhibited an increase in NPP and maintained stability across all age classes, while resilience remained constant with rising atmospheric CO2 and temperatures. However, NPP declined under climate change scenarios for the Norway spruce and Scots pine sites. In these coniferous forests, stability and resilience were more influenced. These results underscore the necessity of accounting for age class diversity -lacking in most, if not all, the current Global Vegetation Models - for reliable and robust assessments of the impacts of climate change on future forests' stability and resilience capacity. We, therefore, advocate for customized management strategies that enhance the adaptability of forests to changing climatic conditions, taking into account the diverse responses of different species and age groups to climate.

Farm forests, seasonal hunger, and biomass poverty: Evidence of induced intensification from panel data in the Ethiopian Highlands.

Seasonal hunger is the most common food insecurity experience for millions of small dryland farmers. This study tests the relationships between food insecurity, farm forests, and biomass poverty using a longitudinal dataset from the Amhara region of Ethiopia. These data form part of the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey, which collected panel data over three survey rounds from 530 households between 2011 and 2016. This dataset represents a collection of unique socioeconomic, wellbeing, and micro-land use measures, including farm forests. Hierarchical mixed effect regression models assessed the relationship between food insecurity and farm forests as well as the conditional effects of biomass poverty among the poorest farmers and women-headed households. Over a six-year study period, farmers reported increased stress from smaller land holdings, higher prices, and climate-related shocks. A clear trend towards spontaneous dispersed afforestation is observed by both researchers and satellite remote sensing. Model results indicate, dedicating approximately 10% of farm area to forest reduces months of food insecurity by half. The greatest reductions in food insecurity from farm forests are reported by ultra-poor and crop residue-burning households, suggesting that biomass poverty may be a major constraint to resilient food security on these farms. This research provides novel quantitative evidence of induced intensification and food security impacts of farm management preserving and building stores of biomass value as green assets. The results reported here have important implications for nature-based solutions as a major strategy to achieve sustainable development in some contexts.

Analysis of wastage mechanisms in the supply chain of fish products in a circular economy perspective: Empirical research.

The problem of food waste at the post-consumption phase, as well as its rational management, is one of the central matters of the transition process undertaken by the European Union, and it is one of the priorities in the Action Plan for a Circular Economy. In particular, the waste of fish products occurs throughout its supply chain. A wide literature is provided in analyzing waste on the first part of the fishing supply chain while high importance is also given to its consumption phase, especially regarding dynamics, causes and social behaviors. The paper aims at investigating mechanisms and causes of wastage that occurs in the last part of the supply chain, at a local level in Italy, by focusing the analysis at the final stage of fish consumption, produced by Italian households. Among the causes, the change in consumption habits and attitudes is also influenced by the restrictions of the healthy regulations adopted for the pandemic. Specifically, a survey was conducted to investigate what actions, habits and behaviors contribute to producing fish food waste. Causes of waste have been discussed by framing them under two dimensions of final consumption, home consumption and out-of-home consumption. Findings carried out from the research suggest knowledge of channels of distribution and integrative elements to manage the leftover food as well as the intensity of fish consumption are basilar to understand the wastage mechanism in a circular perspective. This study is an assessment of whether factors identified as causes, may increase, or decrease the waste. The importance of realizing explorative studies at the consumption phase under the approach of considering fish waste, not only as a fraction into the food waste but even a distinct part as a whole, is also given by the need to create specific strategies for sustainable production and consumption. A reflection is conducted as to how this study can be the basis for future studies on other food products related to the challenge of the rational management of food waste studies in a circular perspective.

Found in Complexity, Lost in Fragmentation: Putting Soil Degradation in a Landscape Ecology Perspective.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) assumes spatial disparities in land resources as a key driver of soil degradation and early desertification processes all over the world. Although regional divides in soil quality have been frequently observed in Mediterranean-type ecosystems, the impact of landscape configuration on the spatial distribution of sensitive soils was poorly investigated in Southern Europe, an affected region sensu UNCCD. Our study proposes a spatially explicit analysis of 16 ecological metrics (namely, patch size and shape, fragmentation, interspersion, and juxtaposition) applied to three classes of a landscape with different levels of exposure to land degradation ('non-affected', 'fragile', and 'critical'). Land classification was based on the Environmentally Sensitive Area Index (ESAI) calculated for Italy at 3 time points along a 50-year period (1960, 1990, 2010). Ecological metrics were calculated at both landscape and class scale and summarized for each Italian province-a relevant policy scale for the Italian National Action Plan (NAP) to combat desertification. With the mean level of soil sensitivity rising over time almost everywhere in Italy, 'non-affected' land became more fragmented, the number of 'fragile' and 'critical' patches increased significantly, and the average patch size of both classes followed the same trend. Such dynamics resulted in intrinsically disordered landscapes, with (i) larger (and widely connected) 'critical' land patches, (ii) spatially diffused and convoluted 'fragile' land patches, and (iii) a more interspersed and heterogeneous matrix of 'non affected' land. Based on these results, we discussed the effects of increasing numbers and sizes of 'critical' patches in terms of land degradation. A sudden expansion of 'critical' land may determine negative environmental consequences since (i) the increasing number of these patches may trigger desertification risk and (ii) the buffering effect of neighboring, non-affected land is supposed to be less efficient, and this contains a downward spiral toward land degradation less effectively. Policy strategies proposed in the NAPs of affected countries are required to account more explicitly on the intrinsic, spatio-temporal evolution of 'critical' land patches in affected regions.

Preliminary Investigation on Systems for the Preventive Diagnosis of Faults on Agricultural Operating Machines.

This paper aims to investigate failures induced by vibrations on machines, focusing on agricultural ones. The research on literature has brought to light a considerable amount of data on the driven vehicles and not much on the operating machines, including the ones that we looked for. For this reason, it was decided to direct a survey with the people who work with agricultural machinery every day: operators, sub-contractors, and producers. They were asked about the most frequent breakage, particularly in relation to the rotary harrow, the topic of this work. The questionnaire results showed the types of failures the harrow is most vulnerable to, indicating the times of failure and reparation and the need to set up a potentially useful preventive maintenance supporting system on these machines. Part of the work was then focused on the proposition of a method to investigate bearing failures in the rotary harrow, considering that these have been analyzed in the technical literature and in the survey as the most at-risk components. The proposed method in this work serves as a beginning for the development of a future on board sent-shore-based maintenance system for continuous monitoring of the bearing.

From Historical Narratives to Circular Economy: De-Complexifying the "Desertification" Debate.

Assuming the importance of a "socioeconomic mosaic" influencing soil and land degradation at the landscape scale, spatial contexts should be considered in the analysis of desertification risk as a base for the design of appropriate counteracting strategies. A holistic approach grounded on a multi-scale qualitative and quantitative assessment is required to identify optimal development strategies regulating the socioeconomic dimensions of land degradation. In the last few decades, the operational thinking at the base of a comprehensive, holistic theory of land degradation evolved toward many different conceptual steps. Moving from empirical, qualitative and unstructured frameworks to a more structured, rational and articulated thinking, such theoretical approaches have been usually oriented toward complex and non-linear dynamics benefiting from progressive and refined approximations. Based on these premises, eleven disciplinary approaches were identified and commented extensively on in the present study, and were classified along a gradient of increasing complexity, from more qualitative and de-structured frameworks to more articulated, non-linear thinking aimed at interpreting the intrinsic fragmentation and heterogeneity of environmental and socioeconomic processes underlying land degradation. Identifying, reviewing and classifying such approaches demonstrated that the evolution of global thinking in land degradation was intimately non-linear, developing narrative and deductive approaches together with inferential, experimentally oriented visions. Focusing specifically on advanced economies in the world, our review contributes to systematize multiple-sometimes entropic-interpretations of desertification processes into a more organized framework, giving value to methodological interplays and specific interpretations of the latent processes underlying land degradation.

Risk Assessment for Musculoskeletal Disorders in Forestry: A Comparison between RULA and REBA in the Manual Feeding of a Wood-Chipper.

The analysis of the postural attitude of workers during the interaction with workstation's elements and working environment is essential in the evaluation and prevention of biomechanical overload risk in workplaces. RULA (Rapid Upper Limb Assessment) and REBA (Rapid Entire Body Assessment) are the two easiest methods for postural risk assessment in the workplace. Few studies investigated postural risk in forestry sector with regard to human⁻machine interaction, in particular manually fed wood-chippers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the postures assumed by an operator during the manual feeding of a wood-chipper, and to compare RULA and REBA, in order to identify the more effective and appropriate method for the assessment of the risk of biomechanical postural overload. The results pointed out several postural issues of the upper limbs, and showed that RULA is a more precautionary method to protect operator's health during the targeted tasks. Implications to improve the human⁻wood-chipper interaction are discussed.

Horizontal vs vertical growth: Understanding latent patterns of urban expansion in large metropolitan regions.

Building activity at the metropolitan scale reflects socioeconomic transformations increasingly dependent on place-specific factors. The present study investigates height profile and age of buildings over 12 time intervals (1910s-2010s) in Greece, a country experiencing particularly complex urban cycles in the last century, with the aim to identify distinctive forces fueling vertical and horizontal urban expansion. To discriminate vertical from horizontal expansion, a new indicator of urban growth ('Vertical-to-Horizontal Growth' ratio, VHG) was proposed and used to identify the dominant socioeconomic profile underlying local-scale urbanization processes. Results of this study contribute to discriminate intense vertical expansion coinciding with population growth in large urban areas (Athens, Salonika, Iraklio) from moderate horizontal expansion around medium-rank cities, along coastal areas and in internal lowlands with small compact towns. Greek municipalities display spatial patterns of building activity that reflect the distinct impact of geographical gradients, divergent responses to market stimuli and planning constraints. As in other European countries, urban cycles in Greece were heterogeneous over space, justifying a joint analysis of intensity and spatial direction of metropolitan growth.

Complexity in action: Untangling latent relationships between land quality, economic structures and socio-spatial patterns in Italy.

Land quality, a key economic capital supporting local development, is affected by biophysical and anthropogenic factors. Taken as a relevant attribute of economic systems, land quality has shaped the territorial organization of any given region influencing localization of agriculture, industry and settlements. In regions with long-established human-landscape interactions, such as the Mediterranean basin, land quality has determined social disparities and polarization in the use of land, reflecting the action of geographical gradients based on elevation and population density. The present study investigates latent relationships within a large set of indicators profiling local communities and land quality on a fine-grained resolution scale in Italy with the aim to assess the potential impact of land quality on the regional socioeconomic structure. The importance of land quality gradients in the socioeconomic configuration of urban and rural regions was verified analyzing the distribution of 149 socioeconomic and environmental indicators organized in 5 themes and 17 research dimensions. Agriculture, income, education and labour market variables discriminate areas with high land quality from areas with low land quality. While differential land quality in peri-urban areas may reflect conflicts between competing actors, moderate (or low) quality of land in rural districts is associated with depopulation, land abandonment, subsidence agriculture, unemployment and low educational levels. We conclude that the socioeconomic profile of local communities has been influenced by land quality in a different way along urban-rural gradients. Policies integrating environmental and socioeconomic measures are required to consider land quality as a pivotal target for sustainable development. Regional planning will benefit from an in-depth understanding of place-specific relationships between local communities and the environment.

Urban green spaces activities: A preparatory groundwork for a safety management system.

INTRODUCTION: Urban green spaces works and maintenance are high-risk activities and usually represent possible sources of injuries. The management issues are complex and strongly influenced by companies' policies in terms of safety management and human factor. A high number of tasks-including protecting public health and safety and safe working procedures-need to be faced by professional arborists or gardeners. METHOD: The present paper provides a preparatory groundwork for modeling and describing the real risk levels during the abovementioned activities. The methodology represents a useful tool for decision making both for group leaders and safety coordinators. This goal is reached by collecting data emerging from several workplaces located in North East Italy regarding the frequency and severity of injuries. RESULTS: The preliminary results point out that the most frequent injuries in green maintenance activities are represented by cuts, contusions, and ocular lesions, but none of them have lead to particularly serious consequences for the operators; indeed, the high levels of severity are related to traumas, fractures, and acute lumbar herniated discs. The riskiest activities are related to pruning, especially using mobile elevating work platforms, and grass cutting, especially when operated in escarpments and banks. Workers' behavior and companies' safety policies are key elements for a correct safety management system.

Cities as selective land predators? A lesson on urban growth, deregulated planning and sprawl containment.

The present study investigates changes in the use of land caused by the expansion of an informal city in the Mediterranean region (Athens, Greece) and it proposes a simplified methodology to assess selective land take at the scale of municipalities. The amount of land take over twenty years (1987-2007) for cropland, sparsely vegetated areas and natural land was compared with the surface area of the respective class at the beginning of the study period (1987). Indicators of selective land take by class were correlated with socioeconomic indicators at the scale of municipalities to verify the influence of the local context and the impact of urban planning on land take processes. Evidence indicates that urban expansion into fringe land consumes primarily cropland and sparse vegetation in the case of the Athens' metropolitan region. Cropland and sparse vegetation were consumed proportionally more than the respective availability in 16 municipalities out of 60. Agricultural land take was positively correlated with population density and growth rate, rate of participation to the job market and road density. Sparse vegetation land take was observed in municipalities with predominance of high density settlements. As a result of second-home expansion in coastal municipalities, natural land was converted to urban use in proportion to the availability in the landscape. Urban planning seems to have a limited impact on selective land take.

Complex Adaptive Systems, soil degradation and land sensitivity to desertification: A multivariate assessment of Italian agro-forest landscape.

Degradation of soils and sensitivity of land to desertification are intensified in last decades in the Mediterranean region producing heterogeneous spatial patterns determined by the interplay of factors such as climate, land-use changes, and human pressure. The present study hypothesizes that rising levels of soil degradation and land sensitivity to desertification are reflected into increasingly complex (and non-linear) relationships between environmental and socioeconomic variables. To verify this hypothesis, the Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) framework was used to explore the spatiotemporal dynamics of eleven indicators derived from a standard assessment of soil degradation and land sensitivity to desertification in Italy. Indicators were made available on a detailed spatial scale (773 agricultural districts) for various years (1960, 1990, 2000 and 2010) and analyzed through a multi-dimensional exploratory data analysis. Our results indicate that the number of significant pair-wise correlations observed between indicators increased with the level of soil and land degradation, although with marked differences between northern and southern Italy. 'Fast' and 'slow' factors underlying soil and land degradation, and 'rapidly-evolving' or 'locked' agricultural districts were identified according to the rapidity of change estimated for each of the indicators studied. In southern Italy, 'rapidly-evolving' districts show a high level of soil degradation and land sensitivity to desertification during the whole period of investigation. On the contrary, those districts in northern Italy are those experiencing a moderate soil degradation and land sensitivity to desertification with the highest increase in the level of sensitivity over time. The study framework contributes to the assessment of complex local systems' dynamics in affluent but divided countries. Results may inform thematic strategies for the mitigation of land and soil degradation in the framework of action plans to combat desertification.

Soil resources, land cover changes and rural areas: towards a spatial mismatch?

The present study analyzes the impact of long-term urban expansion on soil depletion in Emilia-Romagna, an agricultural-specialized region of northern Italy. Using settlement density maps at three points in time (1945, 1971 and 2001) dense and diffused urbanization trends were assessed and correlated with soil quality. Non-urbanized land decreased from 11.8% in 1945 to 6.3% in 2001. Urbanization dynamics between 1945 and 1971 reflect the increase of dense settlements around pre-existing urban centers. To the contrary, a discontinuous, low- and medium-density urban expansion along the road network and in the most fertile lowland areas was observed between 1971 and 2001. Overall, urbanization consumed soils with progressively higher quality. However, a diverging trend was observed in the two investigated time intervals: soil with high quality was occupied by compact and dense settlements during 1945-1971 and by discontinuous, medium- and low-density settlements during 1971-2001. These findings document the polarization in areas with low and high soil capital and may reflect disparities in agricultural production and increasing environmental degradation. Moreover, the analysis shows a diverging trend between land and soil consumption patterns suggesting that the edification of pervious land is an unreliable indicator of soil quality depletion. Taken together, the results of this study illustrate the (increasing) spatial mismatch between agricultural land and high-quality soils as a consequence of urbanization-driven landscape transformations and may inform measures to contain soil depletion driven by economic growth.