2019 TERRAenVISION 2019 - 92 articles
Barcelona, Spain | 2–7 September 2019
Volume Editors:
Ioannis N. Daliakopoulos, Hellenic Mediterranean University, Greece
Artemi Cerdà, University of Valencia, Spain
Spain is Europe’s second largest producer of pork with 99.561 pig farms. The excess of manure available in intensive pig breeding areas in combination with lack of land to spread it on, needs addressing. Around 70 million kg of pig manure is pr...
Our planet suffers from humankind’s impact on natural resources, biogeochemical cycles and ecosystems. Intensive modern agriculture with inappropriate inputs of fertilisers, pesticides and fossil fuel –based energy has increasingly added...
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) initiated in 2001 aims to assess the impacts of human pressure on ecosystem services (ES) and human well-being. Since then, the ES have been a worldwide concern, namely regarding to biodiversity loss and land...
Biogas production through anaerobic digestion is a well-established practice worldwide combining waste treatment and energy production at the same time. One of the challenges of this technology is to increase the yield of biogas production and secure...
Properties of constructed soils determine the functioning of nature-based solutions, such as stormwater bioretention beds. Water infiltration, colloid transport and heat transport in the soil layer are affected by changes in pore system geometry of t...
As the demand for high-quality wild greens rises, due to their high nutritional, culinary, and medicinal properties, the potential overexploitation and excessive disruption of their natural habitats bring serious environmental problems to the foregro...
Bringing up conservation awareness among key stakeholders is essential for water management and it requires motivation and dialogue in order to achieve local and global environmental sustainability. Water management and agriculture must be in agreeme...
Adequate soil information to adapt fertilizer plans and support farmers’ yield ambitions is either hard to obtain or expensive, as it often requires soil sampling and analyses in a lab. AgroCares has developed two services, i.e., the Scanner an...
Soil degradation and subsequent soil erosion is a major threat to vital ecosystem services, to food production, and finally to human societies. This threat is particularly imminent in subarctic Iceland and tropical Ethiopia. Both countries underwent...
Food waste is a stream with multiple social, economic, and environmental implications, generated throughout all the life cycle stages of food. Among these stages, in developed and top touristic destination countries such as Greece, the role of the ho...
When it comes to assessing the agronomic and environmental performances of a cropping system, collaborative research with real farms can provide a lot of information that is not easily available when working in experimental plots. For example, this m...
A review on trial erosion shows that soil erosion rates are one to three orders of magnitude higher than the ones recommended as sustainable. This is threatening the sustainable managements of mountain terrains, mainly in the popular hiking paths. Th...
As the most important type of public green space, parks are crucial for delivering a wide range of ecosystem services that contribute to the well-being of urban residents. Nevertheless, the criteria for selecting vegetation structure and composition...
Agricultural cropping systems and experiments include complex interactions of processes and various management practices and/or treatments under a wide range of environmental and climatic conditions. The use of standardized formats to monitor and doc...
Fires were once a natural phenomenon that helped to shape species distribution, contributed to the persistence of fire-dependent species, and assisted the natural evolution of ecosystems. However, nowadays, most of the forest fires worldwide are not...
Under arid conditions, where water availability is the limiting factor for plant survival, water balance models can be used to explain vegetation dynamics. [...]
In 2017, an interdisciplinary seminar “Drought in our Regions” was organized at the Technical University in Zvolen. The topic of the action was focused on problems with weather extremes and drought in agricultural sector. The seminar also...
A high-resolution UAV-borne LiDAR system with a Velodyne VLP16-Lite at its core was developed for surveying applications. The LiDAR unit was combined with a high-end IMU-GNSS solution for direct georeferencing (APX-15) and a single-board computer for...
Multi-temporal Land use and Land cover (LULC) monitoring is a crucial parameter for assessing an area’s landscape ecology regime. LULC changes can be effectively used to describe dynamics of both urban or rural environments and vegetation patte...
Interactions between soil and rainfall plays a vital role in ecological, hydrological and biogeochemical cycles of land. Among those interactions, the phenomenon of rainfall induced soil erosion is crucial to the soil functions, as it affects the soi...
FIRElinks is a EU-spanning network of scientists and practitioners involved in forest fire research and land management with backgrounds such as fire dynamics, fire risk management, fire effects on vegetation, fauna, soil and water, and socio-economi...
Spatial and temporal characteristics of surface water resources (e.g., extension, connectivity, seasonality) are key elements in water allocation, climate and hydrological regulation, ecosystem functioning, and the food-energy-water nexus. Changes in...
Currently the productivity of some European cropping systems is maintained artificially by increasing production factors like mineral fertilizers or pesticides in order to mask the loss of productivity resulting from soil quality degradation. Green m...
Ash cover the forest fire affected soil for some weeks or months and act as a key factor to determine the soil and water losses. Ash depth is researched here to determine how affect the soil detachment and the runoff generation. Seventy rainfall simu...
Nowadays, the scientific community is aware of the negative environmental impacts of soil erosion on ecosystem services. Soil erosion is one of the most important causes of land degradation because of its immediate influence of the most fertile topso...
While urbanization has been closely related to economic development and demographic change, heterogeneous patterns and processes of regional growth and change reflect the uneven distribution of urbanization, the subtle impact of demographic dynamics...
Intensification of agriculture worldwide has led to a growing awareness on their environmental impacts, namely on soil quality and long term impact on crop productivity. As a consequence, there is an increasing concern regarding best agricultural man...
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations do not mention Fire as a key factor in achieving an environmentally-friendly human society. This paper reviews the key aspects of the impact of fire that make it necessary to update the S...
Striving to tackle a common water resource scarcity problem, the Drip Irrigation Precise (DRIP) Project aims to develop a state-of-the-art integrated system that will optimize tree crop irrigation (Petousi et al. 2018). To this end, we have developed...
Long-term agricultural practices have been shown to affect soil hydro-physical properties in multiple ways. They affect the stability and distribution of soil aggregates leading to changes in water retention, bulk density, hydraulic conductivity, and...
Rangeland (known as Dehesas or Montados) is a characteristic ecosystem of the southwestern part of the Iberian Peninsula that occupies approximately 3.5 million ha, representing the most important agrosilvopastoral system in Europe. Nowadays, this si...
Crack formation and development have been a general concern in agricultural science. Cracks contribute to soil aeration, aggregate formation, and easy root penetration. However, cracks accelerate soil desiccation, allow deep infiltration of pesticide...
Antibiotics are prescribed in human and veterinary medicine for the treatment of infectious diseases. They are also widely used for animal farming, aquaculture and agriculture. Antibiotics are not fully absorbed and metabolized and are therefore, oft...
Soil erosion through various water processes is a worldwide problem. This research is focused on raindrops’ impact on soil surfaces, which is generally considered the initial stage of the erosion process. Splash erosion monitoring was conducted...
The densification of urban areas has raised concerns over increased pluvial flooding. Flood risk in urban areas might increase under the impact of land use changes. Urbanisation involves the conversion of natural areas to impermeable areas, causing l...
Light pollution is a well-known problem because of its negative impacts on human health, flora, and fauna. From an ecological and engineering point of view, the literature states to consider the following aspects: (1) the light intensity; (2) the com...
Gully erosion in valley bottoms is a frequent process with negative consequences in the dehesa environment. Soil loss, decrease of soil and descend in biomass are among the negative aftereffect of gully erosion processes. Studies conducted in agrosil...
SPECTORS—“Sensor products for enterprises creating technological opportunities in airborne remote sensing”—is a project on civil applications with drones lasting from Sept. 2016 to July 2020. The international cooperation proj...
Food waste represents 25–35% of the European Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) [1], thus its diversion into innovative utilization streams is critical for sustainable waste management and the achievement of circularity. [...]
Soil is a key component of ecosystems as it provides fundamental ecosystem functions and services, first of all supporting primary productivity, by physical, chemical and biological interaction with plants. However, soil loss and degradation are at p...
Viticulture is a land use system with a high impact on the environment and the landscape due to the high input of energy and material for soil and plant management. Reducing the input would help to reduce both, the environmental and economic costs, a...
Nitrate leaching into groundwater is a serious issue in many parts of the world. Usually agricultural use of fertilizers is blamed to be the main source of pollution, but other human activities, like leaky or inexistent sewage systems can also be imp...
Located in the North-West of Algeria, the foothills of Dahra are affected by the problems of water erosion where agricultural soils are under severe degradation due to the mismatch influence between a semi-arid climate and the prevailing cropping sys...
Due to the increasing number and virulence of forest wildfires recently observed around the world, the establishment of a simple, accurate and reliable index that would correctly evaluate the fire effects on soil quality as a support for a suitable f...
Forest and natural landscapes are usually considered to provide increased hydrological services over agriculture due to increased vegetation cover. Natural vegetation is expected to protect soils against erosion, regulate floods by increasing litter...
The degree of purity of materials recovered from municipal solid waste (MSW) depends mainly on the objective: the intended use of the recovered material and the cost to recover this material in its pure form, determined by the intensity of the effort...
Anaerobic digestion of urban organic wastes, farming slurries or sewage sludge is a common practice in waste treatment plants. In the city of Reykjavik, the organic waste fraction constituted by 60% of biomass and 40% of food waste will be transforme...
Recent climate change observations and projections reveal an intensification of weather patterns, leading to severe floods and droughts in most parts of the world. The intensification of weather patterns could mitigate the effectiveness of flood prot...
Ecosystems that are in equilibrium provide vital resources to local inhabitants, including protection from naturally occurring disasters. [...]
The increase of source-separation of bio-waste, largely represented by food waste, and their subsequent biological treatment, is essential in waste management strategy. Aerobic and biological composting of bio-waste is a process that requires experie...
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