How Ecosystem Services Can Strengthen the Regeneration Policies for Monumental Olive Groves Destroyed by Xylella fastidiosa Bacterium in a Peri-Urban Area

Abstract

The Apulian Region (Italy) is a socio-ecological system shaped by the millennial co-evolution between human actions and ecological processes. It is characterized by monumental olive groves protected from Regional Law 14/2007 for the cultural value of the landscape, currently threatened by the spread of a devastating phytopathogen, the bacteria Xylella fastidiosa. The aim of this paper is to apply landscape resilience analysis focusing on ecosystem services to understand the potential effects and trade-offs of regeneration policies in a peri-urban area characterized by monumental olive groves land cover. The study involved land-cover and land-use analysis, supported by a survey on the inhabitants and an ecosystem services analysis. The results showed a mismatch between the agroecosystem and the social and economic use linked to leisure or hospitality. The study area was defined as a peri-urban landscape characterized by tourist use. From the interviews of the users, the cultural heritage of olive groves seems linked to the presence of olive trees like a status quo of the landscape and olive oil productions. The culture aspect could thus be preserved by changing the type of olive trees. In addition, the analysis showed that the microclimate could be preserved and enhanced in terms of air temperature and thermal comfort, by replacing the olive trees with varieties resistant to Xylella, such as cv. Leccino. Therefore, regeneration policies that promote replacing dead olive groves with new olive trees could be efficient to stimulate social components of the landscape and improve the resilience of ecosystem services in peri-urban areas in the interest of the cultural heritage of the users and benefits that they provide. An ecosystem services analysis at a local scale could be a strategy for an integrated regenerate approach between land-use and land-cover with social, ecological, and economic evolutions vision orientated to a sustainable and desirable future.

Analysis of Olive Grove Destruction by Xylella fastidiosa Bacterium on the Land Surface Temperature in Salento Detected Using Satellite Images

“…Regional landscape regenerations policies should promote new land cover patterns and functions with a high capacity to mitigate microclimates that have an economic and cultural aspect. Furthermore, the recurrence analysis showed a change in the albedo; therefore, this study could be used to focus on the relationship between land cover change caused by X. fastidiosa and biogeochemical processes to develop regional land rehabilitation policies [48].…”

Increase of landscape ecosystem services generated by agrivoltaics systems

“…Starting from the Ecosystem Services matrix of land use by Burkhard [16], and with the help of experts, the land use change generated from Scenario T0 to Scenario T1 was characterized in terms of ecosystem services, by considering the international ecosystem services scheme developed by TEEB [17,18,19,20].…”

PeMoScoring: a rapid screening of emerging threats caused by invasive plant pests.

“…Risk managers face the continuously increasing effects of global trade to biological invasions (Hulme, 2021): from higher commodity trade volumes to the integration of new regions in the geography of international trade, expanding source pools of potential invasive species (Liebhold et al, 2017;Seebens et al, 2018). As far as plant protection is concerned, there are numerous examples available in the scienti c literature that indicate the negative effects on crops (Bucci, 2018;De Groote et al, 2020), ecosystem functions (Martín, 2019;Cancellario et al, 2023), sustainability of rural economies (De Groote et al, 2020; Schneider et al, 2020) and cultural heritage (Semeraro et al, 2021). Furthermore, risk managers are aware that pre-invasion costs of management are lower than those of actions taken post-invasion and that resources should be timely allocated to targeted actions to obtain results e ciently.…”