scholarly journals Temporal evolution of flow-like landslide hazard for a road infrastructure in the municipality of Nocera Inferiore (southern Italy) under the effect of climate change

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 3019-3035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Uzielli ◽  
Guido Rianna ◽  
Fabio Ciervo ◽  
Paola Mercogliano ◽  
Unni K. Eidsvig

Abstract. In recent years, flow-like landslides have extensively affected pyroclastic covers in the Campania region in southern Italy, causing human suffering and conspicuous economic damages. Due to the high criticality of the area, a proper assessment of future variations in event occurrences due to expected climate changes is crucial. The study assesses the temporal variation in flow-like landslide hazard for a section of the A3 “Salerno–Napoli” motorway, which runs across the toe of the Monte Albino relief in the Nocera Inferiore municipality. Hazard is estimated spatially depending on (1) the likelihood of rainfall-induced event occurrence within the study area and (2) the probability that the any specific location in the study area will be affected during the runout. The probability of occurrence of an event is calculated through the application of Bayesian theory. Temporal variations due to climate change are estimated up to the year 2100 through an ensemble of high-resolution climate projections, accounting for current uncertainties in the characterization of variations in rainfall patterns. Reach probability, or defining the probability that a given spatial location is affected by flow-like landslides, is calculated spatially based on a distributed empirical model. The outputs of the study predict substantial increases in occurrence probability over time for two different scenarios of future socioeconomic growth and atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Uzielli ◽  
Guido Rianna ◽  
Fabio Ciervo ◽  
Paola Mercogliano ◽  
Unni K. Eidsvig

Abstract. In recent years, landslide events have extensively affected pyroclastic covers of the Campania Region in southern Italy, causing victims and conspicuous economic damages. Due to the high criticality of the area, a proper assessment of future variations in landslide occurrences and related risk is crucial for policy-makers, administrators and infrastructure stakeholders. This paper addresses work performed within the FP7 INTACT project, having the goal to provide a risk framework for critical infrastructure while accounting for climate change. The study is a part of the testing and application of the framework in the Campania region, assessing the temporal variation in landslide hazard specifically for a section of the Autostrada A3 Salerno–Napoli motorway, which runs across the toe of the Monte Albino relief in the Municipality of Nocera Inferiore. In the study, hazard is defined as the yearly probability of a spatial location within a study area to be affected by landslide runout given the occurrence of rainfall-related triggering conditions. Hence, hazard depends both on the likelihood of rainfall-induced landslide triggering within the study area and the likelihood that the specific location will be affected following landslide runout. Landslide triggering probability is calculated through the application of Bayesian theory and relying on local historical rainfall data. Temporal variations in triggering probability due to climate change are estimated from present-day to the year 2100 through the characterization of rainfall patterns and related uncertainties using the EURO-CORDEX Ensemble. Reach probability, defining the probability that a given spatial location is affected by debris flows, is calculated spatially through numerical simulation of landslide runout. The temporal evolution of hazard is investigated specifically in the proximity of the motorway, as to provide a quantitative support for landslide risk analysis.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Cirillo ◽  
Antonello Bonfante ◽  
Giovanna Battipaglia ◽  
Angelita Gambuti ◽  
Sheridan Lois Woo ◽  
...  

<p>Climate change is one of the main challenges for future agriculture since it can severely affect plant growth and development. The Mediterranean area is one of the most vulnerable regions where climatic models have forecasted a significant increase in frequency and severity of drought events. Ongoing climate change is aggravating some critical issues in the production of the autochthonous grape variety Greco, widely cultivated in the Campania Region (southern Italy) and used alone or blend in many quality label wines.</p><p>Nowadays, there is a high risk for the economic sustainability of Greco cultivation due to the following main issues: reduced vine productivity, low selling price of grapes, and territory fragmentation. Such criticisms induce the abandonment of small/medium-sized farms due to either crop conversion or consolidation into larger farms.</p><p>The Greco variety may represent a study model to introduce innovative and integrated management of cultivation techniques, such as pruning and soil management, with the aim to resolve similar problems affecting other autochthonous regional cultivars. They include issues, such as low fertility, that cause an unbalanced ratio among sugars, acids, and affect grape metabolites important for the oxidative stability and sensory quality of wine.</p><p>The GREASE project, funded by Campania Region within the Rural Development Programme 2014-2020, falls within the framework of sustainable management of vineyards (from economic, environmental and social viewpoints) with an insight to climate change. The general objective to improve the potential production of Greco concerns the management of major cultivation practices in viticulture by the realization of a cultivar-specific model for vine canopy and soil management. Optimization of parameters is important in order to achieve a good vegetative and reproductive balance that enhances grape and wine quality, improves farm profitability and environmental sustainability. This project is conducted in a vineyard of Vitis vinifera L. subsp. vinifera ‘Greco’ located in southern Italy (Feudi di San Gregorio farm).</p><p>The projects has 3 main inter-disciplinary actions: A1) to determine the effect of diverse vine pruning systems on plant resource use, through the reconstruction of vine eco-physiological history (dendro-anatomical and -isotopic analyses); A2-A3) to analyse the effect of soil management and of vine training systems on the continuum soil-plant-atmosphere system. Specific activities include: pedoclimatic, vegetative and reproductive, physiological and hydraulic characterization; microvinification and characterization of grapes and wine produced in the different trials; evaluation of resources use efficiency, pests, footprint family markers; model development.</p><p>The impact of the project on other wineries of the Campania Region will be significant due to an increased understanding of how cultivation systems influence the efficient use of available resources in the Greco vineyard. Such knowledge would be useful to design simple modifications to the presently used agronomical practices, to achieve production and economic gains without long-term structural investments. This know-how will also favour other downstream technologies and biotechnologies of viticulture and enology production, as well as the associated companies (e.g., producers of fertilizers, seeds for green manure) to realize products and services better adapted to the development of cultivar-specific viticultural and enological production systems.</p>


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Bellanova ◽  
Giuseppe Calamita ◽  
Alessandro Giocoli ◽  
Raffaele Luongo ◽  
Angela Perrone ◽  
...  

Abstract. This paper reports the results of a geoelectrical survey carried out to investigate the Montaguto earth-flow, located in the southern Apennines (Campania Region, southern Italy). The aim of the survey was to reconstruct the geometry of the landslide body, to improve the knowledge on the geological setting and to indirectly test the effectiveness of a drainage system. Although electrical resistivity contrasts in the electrical images were not very pronounced, due to the lithological characteristic of the outcropping lithotypes, it was possible to observe the presence of both lateral and vertical discontinuities that were associated with lithological boundaries, physical variation of the same material and sliding surfaces. The geoelectrical information obtained was provided to the Italian National Civil Protection Department technicians and was considered for the planning of more appropriate actions for the stabilization and safety of the slide.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Peres ◽  
Alfonso Senatore ◽  
Paola Nanni ◽  
Antonino Cancelliere ◽  
Giuseppe Mendicino ◽  
...  

Abstract. Many recent studies indicate climate change as a phenomenon that significantly alters the water cycle in different regions worldwide, also implying new challenges in water resources management and drought risk assessment. To this end, it is of key importance to ascertain the quality of Regional Climate Models (RCMs), which are commonly used for assessing at proper spatial resolutions future impacts of climate change on hydrological events. In this study, we propose a statistical methodological framework to assess the quality of the EURO-CORDEX RCMs concerning their ability to simulate historic climate (temperature and precipitation) and drought characteristics (duration, accumulated deficit, and intensity) determined by the theory of runs, at seasonal and annual time scales, by comparison with high-density and high-quality ground-based observational datasets. In particular, the proposed methodology is applied to Sicily and Calabria regions (Southern Italy), where long historical precipitation and temperature series were recorded by the ground-based monitoring networks operated by the formerly Regional Hydrographic Offices, whose density is considerably greater than observational gridded datasets available at the European level, such as E-OBS. Results show that the more skilful models, able to reproduce, overall, precipitation and temperature variability, as well as drought characteristics, are based on the COSMO-CLM RCM, with the significant exception of the combination based on the HadGEM2-ES GCM and the RACMO RCM. Nevertheless, the choice of the most appropriate model depends on the specific variable analysed, as well as the temporal and spatial scale of interest. From this point of view, the proposed methodology highlights the skills and weaknesses of the different configurations, supporting a proper model selection for climate projections depending on the examined hydrologic processes.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 907-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Grieger ◽  
Gregor C. Leckebusch ◽  
Uwe Ulbrich

Abstract This paper investigates climate change signals of Southern Hemisphere (SH) moisture flux simulated by three members of one CMIP3 coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model (AOGCM) and a multimodel ensemble of CMIP5 simulations. Generally, flux changes are dominated by increased atmospheric moisture due to temperature increase in the future climate projections. An approach is presented to distinguish between thermodynamical and dynamical influences on moisture flux. Furthermore, a physical interpretation of the transport changes due to dynamics is investigated by decomposing atmospheric waves into different length scales and temporal variations. Signals of moisture flux are compared with fluctuations of geopotential height fields as well as climate signals of extratropical cyclones. Moisture flux variability in the synoptic length scale with temporal variations shorter than 8 days can be assigned to the SH storm track. Climate change signals of these atmospheric waves show a distinctive poleward shift. This can be attributed to the climate change signal of extratropical cyclones. Furthermore, the climate change signal of atmospheric waves can be better understood if strong cyclones that intensify especially on the Eastern Hemisphere are taken into account. Antarctic net precipitation is calculated by means of the vertically integrated moisture flux. Future projections show increasing signals of net precipitation, whereas the dynamical part of net precipitation decreases. This can be understood by means of the low-variability component of synoptic-scale waves, which show a decreasing signal, especially off the coast of West Antarctica. This is shown to be due to changing variability of the Amundsen–Bellingshausen Seas low.


2010 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Palomba ◽  
Giuseppe Blaiotta ◽  
Valeria Ventorino ◽  
Alessandro Saccone ◽  
Olimpia Pepe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Brook ◽  
Antonello Bonfante ◽  
Nicola Damiano ◽  
Chiara Cirillo ◽  
Giovanna Battipaglia ◽  
...  

<p>Sustainable grapevine cultivation and the stable production of high-quality wine is endangered by climate change in many areas of the Mediterranean region. Climate change is expected to induce rising temperatures, changes in precipitation frequency and increasing occurrence of extreme events such as severe and prolonged drought with direct effects on berry production and composition, and consequently wine quality. In this context, the monitoring and dynamic assessment of vine status with an early detection of health decline signs are needed to evaluate and adopt mitigation actions oriented to precision and sustainable agriculture (e.g., irrigation).</p><p>Several indicators are reported in literature to evaluate plant health status (e.g., Ref. MAES reports), based on remote sensing, UAV techniques or in situ data collection. With remote sensing technologies, standardized information, over large areas, at low costs and with high temporal coverage, can be acquired, allowing assessment of plant indicators trends in a practical, repetitive and comparative way. However, data processing techniques do not fully reflect the overall physiological status and healthiness of plant systems. On the other hand, in situ morpho-physiological analyses at the single plant level are time-consuming and restricted to a low number of individuals compared to remote sensing or UAV techniques, not always covering the whole variability of the vineyards.</p><p>This study aimed to apply an integrated multidisciplinary conceptual approach for vine health assessment, based on a systematic process for a multi-source, multi-scale and multi-temporal synergic interpretation of data with different techniques in order to cover the gaps of the single disciplines. This approach was recently developed and successfully tested on an Aglianico vineyard in Southern Italy and its applicability needs to be tested on other terroirs.</p><p>Therefore, in this study, the multidisciplinary approach was calibrated and applied in a hilly environment in southern Italy (La Guardiense farm, Guardia Sanframondi, Benevento, Campania region) on Vitis vinifera L. subsp. vinifera ‘Falanghina’ in order to assess the ability of the system to evaluate the plant status during the various phenological phases. The plant status results obtained from four sites were compared with data collected from different techniques including the monitoring of plant growth and ecophysiology as well as the reconstruction of past eco-physiological behavior through the analysis of tree rings in the stemwood.</p><p>The overall results confirmed the applicability of such an approach to achieve a comprehensive assessment of the vine health status considering the continuum soil-plant-atmosphere, thus furnishing information on possible plant responses to expected environmental changes as valuable inputs to manage cultivation factors in various terroirs.</p>


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