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Plenary Lecture
Monitoring land degradation by the integration of in situ and remote sensed data:
badlands in Basilicata region
Professor Maria Francesca Macchiato
CNISM – Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Universita “Federico II”,
Complesso Universitario di Monte Sant’Angelo, I-80126, Napoli,
ITALY
E-mail: macchiat@na.infn.it
Abstract:
The complexity of land degradation phenomena leads to a large number of
definitions and to the use of terminologies often having distinct
disciplinary-oriented meanings. Although land degradation is under a
debate on terminology and is still difficult to grasp in its totality,
some individual processes of degradation such as soil erosion, wind
erosion, salinization and desert expansion are properly described and
defined. Human activities enter in this framework through the uncontrolled
and irrational exploitation of natural resources. Overgrazing of
rangeland, over-cultivation of cropland, waterlogging and salinization of
irrigated land, deforestation and pollution, intensive change of land use
are some of unsustainable human practices that in recent years undermined
the environmental balance, causing accelerated forms of land degradation.
These processes act on lands at different spatial and temporal scales,
making the understanding and the characterization of land degradation
processes quite arduous. In this talk we present a multidisciplinary
research work carried out through the integration of different monitoring
techniques carried out in an area of Basilicata region in Southern Italy
where badland landforms (“calanchi”) are found in fine-grained clastic
sedimentary bedrock. Badlands consist of deeply-dissected, non vegetated
or poorly-vegetated landforms of high relative relief and high drainage
density; they are conventionally considered areas of extreme soil erosion.
In this work, we focus on the development of a suitable approach for
remote identification of areas interested by “calanchi” formations by
means of the analysis of Landsat ETM images for mapping badlands area.
Contemporaneously we selected some chemical physical parameters (soil
magnetic susceptibility, electrical conductivity, and pH) suitable for the
characterization of erosive processes that took place in the “calanchi”
formations.
Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Maria Macchiato Biography.
Maria Macchiato, is full professor of Physics at the University "Federico
II" of Naples. She is responsible of research activities related to
environmental modelling at DSF (Department of Physical Sciences) of the
University "Federico II". She is also responsible of research activities
related to the development of integrated technologies in situ and in
remote sensing for the study of land degradation and of research
activities related to energetic-environmental planning at IMAA/CNR
(Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis).
Her main areas of interest are in the field of land degradation with a
particular attention to those scientific issues that are related to
climate change and sustainable development. The research lines can be
summarized as in the following: study of vegetation cover dynamics
observed from satellite for desertification and climate studies; soil and
air monitoring by means of integrated chemical and geophysical techniques
for pollution studies; development of integrated methodologies and
multicriteria models for environmental planning. In recent years, she has
been responsible of many National and International projects. At now she
is Project Manager of the project INTERREG III B ARCHIMED "Methodology
integration of EO techniques as operative tool for land degradation
management and planning in Mediterranean areas" and she is responsible of
the Integrated Project "New Energy Externalities Developments for
Sustainability - NEEDS". She counts around 150 scientific international
publications and 140 scientific communications at national and
international conferences.
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