Daniel Franco

The impact of agroforestry networks on scenic beauty estimation The role of a landscape ecological network on a socio-cultural process

The reintroduction of agroforestry networks (via a GIS-supported design procedure) is one of a number of strategies that some authorities of the lagoon of Venice drainage basin (in Italy) are planning to use in order to control lagoon pollution and to achieve landscape amelioration. While attention is paid to the conservation implications and environmental effects of an ecological network, socio-cultural impacts are not generally given the same consideration. The aims of this paper were (1) to assess the impacts of agroforestry network planning outputs on the perception of landscape in terms of scenic beauty (SB) estimation, (2) to analyze the influence of socio-economic variables on the agroforestry role in SB, (3) to analyze the relationships between SB and landscape variables as measured on the local and landscape scales, and (4) to assess the strength of an expert ratingSB empirical procedure utilized in the GIS system. The outcomes of the GIS planning procedure application were found to have a positive impact on the perceptive evaluation of landscape, but landscape sites preference did not appear to be significantly different between socio-economic groups: in all cases, sites with an optimized agroforestry network were preferred to the same sites without. A strong explanatory relationship was found to exist between citizens’ scenic beauty estimation (SBE) and the landscape metrics. The representative empirical procedure gave sound qualitative results for this kind of landscape, but can be efficiently substituted by the regression model tested at the “local” scale. At the “landscape” scale it appears that (1) the explanatory power of the landscape pattern metrics selected for the GIS procedure is high, even for the mean “social” SBE, (2) the main explanatory power among network metrics is expressed by connectivity and circuitry, and (3) it is reasonable to expect that the impact of an agroforestry network on citizens’ SBE could be predicted with the empirical models that were tested.

The role of agroforestry networks in landscape socioeconomic processes: the potential and limits of the contingent valuation method

Abstract Agroforestry networks can be a means to achieve landscape amelioration. Some authorities of the Lagoon of Venice drainage basin (Italy) are planning, amongst other actions to control pollution in the Lagoon, to reintroduce agroforestry by means of a GIS-supported design procedure. The goals of this paper were to assess (i) the contingent valuation (CV) (willingness to pay and willingness to accept) of agroforestry networks and its relationship with socioeconomic and agroforestry role variables, (ii) the coherence between agro-economic policies and farmers expectations, (iii) the relationship between the value of agroforestry as a “shared good” and water quality (non-point source pollution). Respondents associate a positive value/preference to the agroforestry network implementation, although this value is strongly affected firstly by their identity with the landscape and secondly by their income. The motivations of farmers’ evaluation are precise and the agroforestry network is considered not only as an “ethical object” but also as a concrete element of their own cultural and economic world. In this case the contingent value (in particular, in terms of acceptance) increases with the farmer’s economic capacity, and the farmer’s valuation is not linked only to the “good” but also to the “service” offered for implementing it. The expectations of farmers regarding an agroforestry plantation were lower than European Union incentives at the time of survey, and a lack of results in this field is probably linked to poor information and to bureaucratic difficulties. Even if there is general knowledge on water quality, there is little awareness on the non-point source pollution control effect of agroforestry buffer plantations, either in the common people or in those who are environmentally trained (e.g. planning university students). In every case the agroforestry “shared good” evaluation is high enough to permit efficient and supported intervention policies. These results confirm that landscape choices strongly involve issues of identity, perceived rights and evaluation capacity that cannot be simply resolved in terms of preference cost benefit analyses, but a clever use of the CV allows an identification of these same limitations and a partial estimation of them.

PRACTICAL RESULTS OF A WATER BUDGET ESTIMATION FOR A CONSTRUCTED WETLAND

An experimental water treatment plant was established to verify the effectiveness of constructed wetlands to improve water quality in the Venice Lagoon watershed. The wetland comprised three different subsystems, ranging from a riparian swamp to a marsh ecosystem. As a first step, monitoring was conducted over three years to evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of the system. Here, we report an analysis of the water budget resulting from routinely collected hydraulic and meteorological data. We used independent estimates of the water-budget terms, rather than budgetary residual estimation, because we wanted to estimate the water-budget error. Surface-water inflow, surface-water outflow, and direct precipitation were measured. Daily potential evapotranspiration values were estimated using the FAO Penman Monteith equation; runoff was estimated using the USDA Soil Conservation Service curve number model; indirect precipitation that flows toward the wetland via subsurface flow was estimated from the soils field capacity; and seepage was estimated using Darcy’s law. The objectives of the research were to establish the best way to develop a water budget useful for application and design purposes, to determine the term that most influences the water-budget error, and to perform a sensitivity analysis on the parameters affecting this term. Surface flow dominated the wetland system, precipitation and evapotranspiration contributed about 10% to the water budget, and changes in water storage and the seepage flow contributed less than 5% to the water budget. The seepage flow term had the highest uncertainty, and the frequency of ground-water level measurements had the greatest impact on the water-budget error (ranging from 10.0%–28.6%). Therefore, in a free-water surface wetland with a shallow ground-water system, the main effort in field measurement should be to ensure a measurement frequency of less than five days.

Shared ecological knowledge and wetland values: A case study

Abstract The estimation of wetlands’ non-use values to build up a total economic evaluation can be based on stated preference methods, which derives from the standard economic model that assumes a rational assessment of the consequence of preferences on personal utility. The paper describes the nature of the citizens’ shared ecological knowledge of wetlands functions, the relation of the shared ecological knowledge with the official/normative knowledge, and the relation between the motivations outlined by the shared ecological knowledge and those expected by the standard economic model. The results demonstrate that economic preferences are driven by multiple motivations well rooted in the social nature of shared ecological knowledge, and not by simply consequential motivations. In this case study, social knowledge of wetlands’ ecological functions is proportionally related to peoples living proximity to those wetlands. Unexpectedly, shared ecological knowledge of historically well-known and critically important services, like the hydraulic and hydrologic services, has also been diminishing. Furthermore, there is a partial or clear-cut separation between official/normative knowledge and the shared ecological knowledge on crucial aspects like wetlands’ climate change role. This approach helps to construct a motivational framework to derive values that are useful as long as they allow accounting for a complex socio-cultural capital in the public decision making process.

Correlation between annual activity patterns of venomous snakes and rural people in the Niger Delta, southern Nigeria

BackgroundVenomous snakes are among the most serious health hazards for rural people in tropical regions of the world. Herein we compare the monthly activity patterns of eight venomous snake species (Elapidae and Viperidae) with those of rural people in the Niger Delta area of southern Nigeria, in order to identify the periods of highest potential risk for persons, and the human group actually at greater risk of snakebite.ResultsWe documented that above-ground activity of all venomous snakes peaked in the wet season, and that high snake activity and high human activity were most highly correlated between April and August. In addition, we documented that women and teenagers were at relatively higher risk of encountering a venomous snake than adult males, despite they are less often in the field than men.ConclusionsOur results suggest that future programs devoted to mitigate the social and health effects of snakebites in the Niger Delta region should involve especially women and teenagers, with ad-hoc education projects if appropriate. We urge that international organizations working on social and health problems in the developing world, such as IRD, DFID, UNDP, should provide advice through specific programs targeted at especially these categories which have been highlighted in comparatively potential higher threat from snakebites than adult men.

ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEWS AND CASE STUDIES: Searching the Conditioning Factors Explaining the (In)Effectiveness of Protected Areas Management: A Case Study Using a SWOT Approach

Based on long-term fieldwork, we report a descriptive SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis performed by a public agency that manages a protected area (PA) system in a densely populated area (Rome, central Italy) to highlight the core limits in this PAs management effectiveness. The key result of the analysis is that the limits of the management effectiveness and the obstacle in setting improvement strategies can be basically derived from the hierarchical command-and-control government approach and from the adopted management model. The main hindrance to the implementation of a multilevel collaborative management appears to be the “institutional stickiness” of the managing public agency in shifting from its hierarchical government approach to a governance one. Having observed the presence of operational gaps among the best solutions in the scholarly mainstream, the governing capability of the managing authority, and what happens in the field, we suggest that an answer to aligning these factors could be the creation of more fluid conditions for bottom–up initiatives—for instance, by monitoring the multibenefits of PAs for local communities or by making available to the public the economic evaluation of public goods.

A procedure to analyse the strategic outliers and the multiple motivations in a contingent valuation: A case study for a concrete policy purpose

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a methodological approach to analyse the strategic outliers and the multiple motivations in a contingent valuation used for a real policy case study. Design/methodology/approach – The used approach rationalises the cross comparison of the overall different information levels obtained by the survey to outline a qualitative-quantitative pattern of the relations between the rationale and other motivations of preference behaviours. Findings – The paper found that no assumption or investigation tool used alone was sufficient to explain the respondents elicited preferences. The results confirm that those who are willing to pay also hold significant motives other than the rationale ones influencing their decisions. Research limitations/implications – The approach allows to reasonably rule the sharing-out of true zero values from “protest zeros” avoiding the risk of arbitrarily excluding valid data from the CV analyses. Practical implications – The approach may overpass the reasons behind the provision point mechanism; hence, the authors suggest to extend this procedure to divergent environmental contexts to verify the generality of the methodology. Originality/value – The adopted procedure shows that the use of monetary estimates of ecological services to support sustainable decision processes can be acceptable if coupled with the multiple motivations that hold them.

The evaluation of a planning tool through the landscape ecology concepts and methods

Purpose – Landscape ecology represents an area of theoretical and empirical support of spatial planning, providing parameters such as heterogeneity, connectivity and fragmentation. The aim of this study was to use these parameters to evaluate the choices of a real planning tool to protect the biodiversity, to evaluate the applicability limits of concepts and methods used.Design/methodology/approach – This was achieved by analysing the selected spatial indices and their dependency scale, and by the comparison of these results with regard to spatial biotic parameters estimations (birds and mammals).Findings – The study confirmed the scales effect on the indices, unstable at the adopted resolution for extensions up to 6,000‐7,000 meters. The selected indices permitted appreciation of the low effectiveness of the real planning tool in improving conservation of biodiversity. The paper suggests that empirical studies and predictive knowledge at different scales are urgent in this field. To preserve biodiversit...

Long-term, climate-change-related shifts in feeding frequencies of a Mediterranean snake population

In a context of climate change, ecological and physiological adaptations of organisms are of central importance for determining the outcome of niche challenges (e.g., with potential competitors) and species persistence. Typically, long-term data on free-ranging populations are needed to investigate such phenomena. Here, long-term data on a free-ranging population of western whip snakes (Hierophis viridiflavus: Colubridae) from central Italy were used in order to test the hypothesis that snake feeding frequencies should increase in relation to climate warming, thus positively affecting individual performance because of longer annual activity period, increased daily activity and larger prey base. Data from 231 ‘female snake-years’ of records (including inter-annual recaptures) were collected were collected between 1990 and 2014. The frequency of fed snakes varied remarkably across the study period with a significant increase over the years. There was a significant positive effect of the mean annual temperature on the percentage of fed animals, whereas there was a non-significant relationship between yearly rainfall and percentage of fed animals. There was a positive relationship between mean annual temperature and yearly diversity-of-prey index. No other climatic variables were significantly correlated with yearly diversity-of-prey index. This study supported the hypothesis that global warming may be favorable for thermophilic species (such as H. viridiflavus), as it enhances their foraging performances and hence their feeding frequencies. The same may not be necessarily true for other species which have colder preferenda (e.g., Zamenis longissimus).

The scale and pattern influences on the hedgerow networks’ effect on landscape processes

In the last decade we realised several rural landscape amelioration plans (Italy) by means of diffuse reintroduction of agroforestry linear plantations. To this end a GIS decision support system was developed that has been progressively implemented after design problem solutions and field/simulation research. Given that hedgerow (re)introduction could be a means to ameliorate some rural landscape processes, up until today we have reached the conclusion that planning is a necessary way to optimise such a transformation for socio‐economic and intrinsic reasons. Therefore we need to be able to distinguish the effect of the agroforestry systems (mainly hedgerow) among different scales (single planting/landscape) and different patterns (isolated systems/networks) to optimise their positive effects on landscape processes at different scales; and it is not possible to optimise landscape transformations by means of agroforestry network implementation without an action plan able to evaluate them.