Antonina Capra

University of Reggio Calabria | UNIRC · Department of Agricultural Science

Introduction: The diffusion of irrigation in olive orchards requires accurate scheduling of the application of water. Objectives: To evaluate the efficiency of different modes of irrigation scheduling for mature olive trees grown at different plant densities and in different soil types and irrigated under different systems and strategies. Methodolo...

Water erosion is the main cause of soil degradation on cultivated lands under Mediterranean climate. In these conditions, ephemeral gully erosion (EGE) is a major contributor to loss of soil productivity due to the big amounts of soil removed from the most productive top-layer. However, only a few studies on the effects of EGE and artificial contro...

The changes in rainfall erosivity have been investigated using the rainfall erosivity factor (R) proposed for USLE by Wischmeier and Smith (RW-S) and some simplified indexes (the Fournier index modified by Arnoldus, F, a regional index spatial independent, RFr, and a regional index spatial dependent, RFs) estimated by indirect approaches. The analy...

El sector de la agricultura es reconocido como el mayor usuario de agua en el mundo. Un recurso natural cada vez más escaso y contaminado, que además no se utiliza eficientemente. Esto motiva la urgente necesidad de mejorar la eficiencia del uso del agua y el rendimiento de los cultivos bajo riego. Ante esta situación el riego deficitario, o sea, e...

In this study, the medium-term evolution of some erosion channels (ephemeral gullies, EGs) initiated in a wheat-cultivated area on silty-clay-loam soils in central Sicily (Italy) in 1995 was studied over 18 years. The studied EGs showed a cyclic behaviour. They appeared during the rainy season, were erased from July to October by soil infill from a...

Water erosion is the main cause of soil degradation on cultivated lands under Mediterranean climate. In this conditions, gully erosion is a major contributor to loss of soil productivity due to the big amounts of soil removed from the most productive top-layer. However, only few studies on the effects of gully erosion and artificial controlling mea...

Climate characteristics play an essential role in the crop evapotranspiration and therefore affect irrigation. Reference evapotranspiration (ET0) is a climatic parameter that can be computed from weather data and used to a reliable variable for assessing long-term trends of the atmospheric evaporative demand. The study aims to evaluate the effects...

Climate and anthropogenic activities play an important role in streamflow regime variations, but analyses of hydrologic changes often do not differentiate between these factors. Trends in precipitation (Pm), temperatures (T), potential evapotranspiration (ET0), and outflow (O) in the Reno River Mountain Basin (RRMB) during the period 1926–2006 were...

In recent decades a general change in climate has been documented in several locations over the world. Such changes could have significant effects on various environmental scenarios, including water resource management, agriculture, hydrology and ecosystems. The complex topography and coastlines of Mediterranean regions influences the climatic regi...

Soil erosion has been recognized as the major cause of land degradation worldwide. The quantification of soil erosion is an important requirement for representing land degradation processes. One of the crucial points attracting an increased amount of attention in recent years is constituted by the possible discrimination of the different forms of s...

The study analyses spatial and temporal patterns of drought in an area with a wide range of precipitation characteristics (the Calabria region in southern Italy) during the period 1921–2007. The short-time (2, 3 and 6 months) Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) was estimated to analyse drought especially from the agricultural point of view. Prin...

In many semiarid regions of the Mediterranean basin, soil erosion has become a serious environmental problem affecting land productivity, nutrient loss, water quality, and freshwater ecosystems. In some areas of Sicily, rates of soil loss differ according to erosion type and land degradation processes. To date, these differences, although evocated...

Citrus orchards are economically one of the most important crops in South Italy, where climate is semi-arid with scarce rain and high evaporative demand. One way to optimize water resources in this region is to adopt deficit irrigation (DI) strategies, such as regulated deficit irrigation (RDI). In Mediterranean regions, DI criteria have been widel...

In Italy, during last century the mean annual temperature (Tym) increased by 0.4°C/100 years in Northern areas (N) (continental zone) and by 0.7°C/100 years in Central (C) and Southern (S) parts (peninsular zones). A negative trend of annual rainfall (Py) was evident in both N and S areas. Extreme events had different tendencies, corresponding to i...

This paper reports the results of a field investigation aimed to establish morphological similarity between rills and ephemeral gullies. Rill measurements were made on 14 plots having a surface area of 22–352 m2 located on a 14·9% slope and on a plot 6·0 m wide and 22·0 m long having a uniform 22·0% slope. The plots are located on the experimental...

Recent research has shown a lack of long-term monitoring for detailed analysis of gully erosion response to climate characteristics. Measures carried out from 1995 to 2007 in a wheat-cultivated area in Raddusa (Sicily, Italy), represent one of the longest series of field data on ephemeral gully, EG, erosion. The data set collected in a surface area...

Recent concern about the many environmental problems associated with the transport of fine sediment by rivers has generated a need to obtain spatially distributed evidence of the erosion rates operating within a catchment and to explore more explicitly the links between sediment mobilisation, transfer, storage and output. In the past few decades, t...

Deficit irrigation (DI) is an optimization strategy whereby net returns are maximized by reducing the amount of irrigation water; crops are deliberated allowed to sustain some degree of water deficit and yield reduction. Although the DI strategy dates back to the 1970s, this technique is not usually adopted as a practical alternative to full irriga...

The effect of four different irrigation levels on the marketable yield and economic return of summer-growth lettuce was evaluated during 2005 and 2006 in Eastern Sicily, Italy. The viability of deficit irrigation was evaluated by estimating optimum applied water levels. Actual evapotranspiration (ETa) was estimated by combining pan evaporation meas...

Deficit irrigation (DI) is an optimization strategy whereby net returns are maximized by reducing the amount of irrigation water; crops are deliberately allowed to sustain some degree of water deficit and yield reduction. This technique is not usually adopted as a practical alternative to full irrigation by either academics or practitioners. The ma...

Drip irrigation, combined with wastewater reuse, may offer the most effective and efficient way to cope with water shortage for crops and protect the environment receiving wastewater. Emitter and filter clogging are the main problems in the operation of drip systems in developing countries and small communities where treated wastewater is of poor q...

In this paper, monthly values of rainfall (P) and temperature (T) recorded in Southern Italy (Calabria and Sicily) during the period 1921-2000 are investigated. In particular, a series of 211 raingauge and 53 temperature stations are analysed for evidence of trend by using the linear regression and the Kendall non-parametric test. The tests are app...

The paper discusses some drip irrigation system management problems according to the performance of emitters and filters shown in six trials conducted in Sicily (Italy) using six kinds of municipal wastewater that has not undergone previous advanced treatment. Nine types of filters (gravel media, disk and screen) and five types of drip emitters (vo...

Recent research has shown the importance of ephemeral gully (EG) erosion in the context of global erosion and, at the same time, the lack of adequate models to estimate it. At present, the ephemeral gully erosion model (EGEM) is the only conceptual model specifically developed for ephemeral gully erosion estimation. The main aim of the paper is to...

Agriculture is the main user of water in Italy, as in most regions of the world. Particularly in Mediterranean regions, where it is more difficult to meet the agricultural water demand with conventional resources, wastewater reuse represents a viable option. Drip irrigation is particularly suitable for wastewater reuse because it minimises the heal...

System design is one of the most important factors to obtain the full potential of a micro-irrigation system. Micro-irrigation system design is based on a large number of theoretical, rational and empirical relationships and is a time-demanding job. An expert system would be of great help by supplying designers with various levels of experience wit...

Ephemeral gully erosion is responsible for heavy damage to agricultural land and causes sedimentation and drainage network formation in most regions. Ephemeral gully length, width and depth were measured over a 5-yr period in an area of about 120 ha of heavy soils cultivated with durum wheat in Sicily (Italy) in order to quantify the soil losses an...

Agriculture is the main user of water in Italy, as in most regions of the world. Particularly in southern regions, where it is more difficult to meet the agricultural water demand with conventional resources, wastewater (WW) reuse represents a viable option. In northern and central regions, where conventional resources are usually sufficient, WW re...

The clogging of emitters is a major problem encountered in drip/trickle irrigation systems, as partial or complete clogging reduces application uniformity. Clogging is closely related to the quality of the water used. Despite the quantity of research reported in literature concerning the quality treatment and distribution uniformity of irrigation w...