Valorization of Agricultural By-Products Within the “Energyscapes”: Renewable Energy as Driving Force in Modeling Rural Landscape

Due to several growing environmental constraints, renewable energy sources currently play an increasingly crucial role that, owing to their high temporal and spatial variability, needs a careful planning approach. It is important therefore to develop a framework that examines the distribution of different energy sources in a spatio-temporal context. From an energy point of view, a regional territory, such as an internal southern Italian region (the Basilicata Region), can be considered as a paradigmatic case study, because it is characterized by significant sources of renewable energy (e.g., biomass, wind, solar, hydro) connected to its morphological and environmental structure, as well as to its agricultural and food productions. The present paper in based on an analysis of the spatial supply and relationships between renewable energy potentials and rural land, through the use of a Geographic Information System that has been implemented with the aim to analyze the energy system, as well as to optimize the valorization of biomass resources that may be still unutilized within the bioenergy production chain. This study has been carried out even to bridge the gap between energy systems modeling and landscape planning. Within this context, an “Energyscape” may be considered as the effect resulting on the rural landscape from a combination of the supply, demand and infrastructure for energy. This framework could be therefore a starting point for an interdisciplinary analysis able to figure out optimal solutions in decision-making processes, which duly respect the protection and restoring of endangered ecosystems, supporting the decision about an optimal spatial localization of energy plants as well.

     

GIS-based Analysis of Temporal Evolution of Rural Landscape: A Case Study in Southern Italy

The apparent features of a rural landscape are the final result of the interaction among several natural and anthropic factors. The analysis of a landscape, as well as the identification of its best management strategies, can be improved when useful information about its modifications along a wide time period is available, so as to assess the effect of the transformations that have taken place there. The implementation within a geographic information system (GIS) of geographical information derived from ancient historical maps, combined with modern digital cartography and recent remote sensing images may provide a very powerful tool for a better-informed analysis and targeted decision-making strategies about the most appropriate rural landscape planning. With the purpose to detect the land use changes in a typical rural landscape in the Basilicata Region (Southern Italy), spatial analysis using free and open-source GIS tools, in which data covering a period of about two centuries, from 1829 to 2017, were implemented. This multi-temporal analysis was carried out to investigate the landscape structure transformations through the assessment of land use change and the implementation of a methodology for the identification of areas in which there has been a natural evolution of the rural landscape. Then, using landscape metrics and spatial analysis tools, some areas in which the landscape has naturally evolved without any anthropic intervention during these 188 years have been identified, and changes occurred on the rural landscape were assessed quantitatively.