Integrated approaches for the conservation and development of Mediterranean grassland systems

Inglese

The thesis integrated different approaches to better understand the dynamics of permanent grassland systems in three different socio-economic and geographical contexts of the Mediterranean basin. The decision making on the sustainable management of Mediterranean grasslands and rangelands can benefit of the large-scale monitoring and evaluation of land abandonment and intensification trends in different contexts. The availability of new remote sensing monitoring systems can provide evidence of changes in the agroecosystem related to these diverging trends in the context of climate change and site-specific agronomic management practices. The interpretation of remote sensing data in a complex mosaic of vegetation types is not straightforward and requires integrating different expertise, including earth observation, agronomy, animal science, ecology, and social sciences. However, the constraints of Mediterranean grassland systems may include factors that cannot be monitored by large-scale monitoring such as satellite imagery, as in the context of the pastoral systems of the West Bank in Palestine. In these cases, as in many other pastoral systems where ecological processes are structurally coupled with social, political and economic dynamics, bottom-up approaches are necessary to characterize and identify viable options to improve their sustainability and to increase the adaptive capacity of the pastoral communities. On these premises, we hypothesised that an integrated research approach is needed to contribute to the conservation and sustainable management of Mediterranean grasslands and related pastoral systems. More specifically, we hypothesised that i) a land surface phenology approach, based on remote sensed vegetation indices such as NDVI, can effectively contribute to the interpretation of these dynamics from an agronomic perspective, when the priority is to support technical decisions and policy design ; ii) a bottom-up approach based on the active involvement of the local stakeholder can effectively contribute to improve the capacity of the pastoral communities relying on grasslands, through the co-design of agronomic options. The first hypothesis was the topic of research illustrated in chapters 1 and 3, the second is related to chap. 2. This thesis provides an analysis of Mediterranean grasslands and silvopastoral systems in a wide range of environmental and socio-economic contexts, exploring the potential of innovative approaches and technologies. The LSP parameters derived by satellite data proved to be powerful tools for monitoring and classifying grassland vegetation, useful to support the design of development policies, and identifying needs for intervention. The participatory approach in Palestine underscored the importance of involving local stakeholders to overcome sociotechnical barriers and enhance community resilience, particularly in conflict-affected regions. The management experiments run in Spain on rotational grazing systems like AMP showed promising evidences on the potential of remote sensing in characterizing differences in grassland phenology and forage production distribution. In conclusion, this thesis explored the potential of innovative, collaborative, and adaptive strategies and tools to support the sustainability of Mediterranean grasslands and silvopastoral systems and the capacity of the related pastoral communities, in the face of environmental and socio-political challenges. (Due to a words number limit it was not possible to upload the complete abstract).