Abstract
Agricultural terraces are an important element of the Italian landscape. However, abandonment of agricultural areas and increase in the frequency of destructive rainfall events has made it mandatory to increase conservation efforts of terraces to reduce hydrological risks. This requires the development of new approaches capable of identifying and mapping failed or prone-to-fail terraces over large areas. The present work focuses on the development of a more cost-effective alternative, to help public administrators and private land owners to identify fragile areas that may be subject to failure due to the abandonment of terracing systems. We developed a simple field protocol to acquire quantitative measurements of the degree of damage—dry stone wall deformation—and establish a damage classification system. This new methodology is tested at two different sites in Tuscany, central Italy. The processing is based on existing DTMs derived from Airborne Laser Scanner (ALS) data and open source software. The main GIS modules adopted are flow accumulation and water discharge, processed with GRASS GIS. Results show that the damage degree and terrace wall deformation are correlated with flow accumulation even if other factors other than those analyzed can contribute to influence the instability of dry stone walls. These tools are useful for local land management and conservation efforts.
Highlights
The difficult morphology of mountainous and hilly areas often hindered land cultivation and forced local communities to re-shape the land in a way that would facilitate its agricultural use [1,2]
By examining a possible relationship between the damage of dry-stone walls and water flow accumulation, we could establish a methodology based on remote sensing techniques that is capable of identifying potentially damaged sites interraced systems across large areas
In the present work a counter-test was not carried out; this would make the prediction of unstable areas effective using the available data (DTM)
Summary
The difficult morphology of mountainous and hilly areas often hindered land cultivation and forced local communities to re-shape the land in a way that would facilitate its agricultural use [1,2]. The creation of terraces has been considered the most efficient way to allow agriculture and forestry in mountainous and hilly regions all over the world [3,4]. In Tuscany, the terraced vineyards and olive groves are a cultural landmark that is recognized by locals and foreign visitors alike [1,3,16]. These terraces in Tuscany were built using local stones to an average height of 1.43m +/− 0.54 (one standard deviation) with a total range from 0.5 and 3.31 m [17]
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