No abstract

The growth of urban populations causes cities, and their suburbs, to spread, expand, and replace natural lands by agricultural. Urbanization brings land-use change, altering the relationship between human societies and environmental resources. Therefore, the management of natural resources connected to urban expansion has become one of the most important challenges in attaining sustainable landscape. Quarrying is a crucial component of local socio-economic development providing key materials for infrastructures and buildings. However, like many other human activities, quarrying causes a significant impact on the environment. In Mediterranean countries, quarrying activities exert increasing pressures on limited soil and water resources, thus accelerating erosion processes and subsequent destruction of existing arable lands. Quarrying operations can profoundly alter pre-existing ecosystems and perturb hydro-geological and hydrological regimes. They can profoundly modify the substratum, change landscape patterns and integrity, destroy natural habitats and interrupt their natural succession, as well as alter genetic resources. The resulting situation is seriously compromised by anthropic regeneration processes on degraded sites after the end of quarrying activities, which are not focused on potential natural vegetation which these sites could develop, considering the surrounding ecosystems. In this work, we propose a landscape regeneration project which was developed as part of the Environmental Impact Assessment procedure on quarrying activity located in the municipality of Lecce, South Italy. This project aims to integrate environmental and landscape aspects with the economic and social ones in order to guarantee the sustainability of the proposed intervention. The new project modifies the one presented at the start of the quarrying activity which planned planting of trees directly on the bottom of the quarry, (about 40 meters deep from the ground level and three meters above the groundwater level). The new project foresees the partial filling of the quarry using waste materials according to the environmental legislation. This allows to protect the groundwater better and to create a microclimate more suited to the development of natural vegetation. The quarry filling activity represents an economic activity for the company and therefore can guarantee the development of jobs for at least 5 years. In addition, the proposed project aims to reconstitute the pre-existing vegetation, consistently with the surrounding ecosystem. This will allow the development of the priority habitat *6220: Pseudo-steppe with grasses and annuals of the Thero-Brachypodietea (Directive 92/43/CEE), producing a landscape of recognized ecological value, not detached from the surrounding landscape. In this way, the closed quarry can act as a stepping stone and play a significant role in regulating green infrastructure in landscapes.

Many landscapes are the result of interactions between ecological processes, economic activities, and the administrative and political organisation of society. Therefore, as a consequence of human transformations over time, some landscapes may contain residual damaged habitats hosting testimony of past biodiversity that can be called “biodiversity heritage relicts”. From this perspective, the aim of the paper is to describe an applicative approach to habitat restoration in social-ecological landscapes. The approach entails the restoration of vegetation using GIS analysis integrated with field activities and a phytosociological method. The methodology includes expert and stakeholder involvement in order to increase the resilience of the measures over time, thereby consolidating landscape value. The approach was applied in the municipality of Campi Salentina, Province of Lecce, Italy, and the result was the restoration of an important riparian habitat classified under Directive 92/43/EEC as “Salix alba and Populus alba galleries” (code 92A0), which had not previously been recorded in the Province of Lecce. In this case, the project re-established a natural habitat that represented a “biodiversity heritage relict” in the landscape. The paper shows that direct knowledge of the landscape and the ability to identify “biodiversity heritage relicts”, in combination with a phytosociological approach, can enhance the effectiveness of ecological restoration projects. Moreover, social and institutional integration in projects helps ensure the management of the measures over time.

The presence of wildlife in areas with a high concentration of farming activities can create a conflict between conservation objectives and productive purposes. Near Brindisi (Apulia, S-E Italy), a substantial amount of cash compensation claims for damages reported by local farmers and attributed to starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) has been registered. The aim of this study was to quantify the starling population wintering in the Apulia region, in order to assess the potential damage to crop production caused by this species. Our analysis was conducted over three years and included three main activities: a study of starling abundance and movements, the identification of areas and crops affected by damages, and a determination of the damage to the agricultural system in terms of quantity and concentration (heatmap). The study showed a loss of expected production that was coherent with the eating capacity of starlings wintering in the region. This means a loss, in terms of gross profitable production, of around 550,000 euros concentrated in a few narrow areas close to the roosts. Results on species behavior, damage quantification, and mapping are useful elements aimed to activate trade-off measures to preserve production and protection objectives, and to allow policymakers to address enforcement interventions and to establish parameters for financial compensation.

Global change, which regroups global warming, landscape transformations and other anthropic modifications of ecosystems, has effects on populations and communities and produces modifications in the expansion area of species. While some species disappear, other ones are beneficiated by the new conditions and some of them evolve in new adapted forms or leave their ancient distribution area.As climate change tends to increase the temperature in several regions of the world, some species have been seen to leave areas in equatorial regions in order to join colder areas either towards the north of the northern hemisphere or towards the south of the southern one.Many birds as have moved geographically in direction to the poles and in many cases they have anticipated their laying dates. Actually, two tit species that use to lay their eggs in a period that their fledging dates synchronize with the emerging dates of caterpillars are now evolving to reproductive in periods earlier than before the climate change. Several species are reacting like that and other ones are moving to the north in Europe for example. Nevertheless, and very curiously, European starling, Sturnus vulgaris, populations are behaving on the contrary: their laying dates are moving towards later spring and their distribution area is moving towards the south. In this study we explore and discuss about different factors that may explain this difference from other birds.