E. A. C. Costantini

CNR-IBE

This work aimed at setting up a multivariate and geostatistical methodology to map viticultural terroirs at the province scale (1:125,000). The methodology is based upon the creation of a GIS storing all the viticultural and oenological legacy data of experimental vineyards (1989–2009), long-term climate data, digital elevation model, soilscapes (l...

The area of salt-affected soils is increasing globally, mainly due to land use and management malpractices, which can threaten soil health and the sustainability of farms. Climate change is likely to increase the prevalence of salt-affected soils in many agricultural areas due to increased aridity and, in coastal areas, due to the increase in sea w...

Soil fauna actively contributes to drive crucial processes of energy and nutrient cycling in agricultural systems, to influence the quality of crops and pest incidence. Soil tillage can be absolutely considered as one of the most influential agricultural manipulations of soil structure and has a profound influence on soil biology and its provision...

Questo studio nasce a supporto della pianificazione territoriale in campo energetico e si propone i seguenti obiettivi: i) quantificare l’estensione delle aree marginali (AM) potenzialmente coltivabili con colture da biomassa ad uso energetico; ii) stimare le quantità di acqua necessaria alla produzione di dette colture; iii) stimare le quantità di...

Healthy soils form the basis of sustainable viticulture, where soil characteristics have a direct impact on wine quantity and quality. Soil not only provides water and nutrients to vines, but is also a living medium containing micro- and macroorganisms that perform many ecological functions and provide ecosystem services. These organisms are involv...

Understanding the multifunctionality of soil biodiversity patterns across pedodiversity

The short review reports a selection of innovations that successfully countered soil salinisation. We reviewed different case studies at the farm-level, in order to be able to identify strategies and define a framework to deal with soil salinisation in Europe.

Maintaining or recovering soil health is becoming a goal of many policies carried out at national, continental and global scales to promote global health. This viewpoint is aimed at stressing the relevance of a holistic approach to soil health assessment and monitoring, which is not only related to soil functional biodiversity but also considers th...

The concepts of soil quality and soil health concern the ability of soil to function and provide ecosystem services. This chapter reports a historical and critical overview of the two terms and a review of the methods and indicators currently used to assess and monitor soil quality and health. Different approaches are described and guidelines on th...

MISSIONE TERRA: IL SUOLO AL CENTRO DEL GREEN DEAL EUROPEO. PUNTI DI FORZA E DEBOLEZZA

Interrow organic management to restore soil functionality of vineyards

Avoiding improper earth movements before planting tree crops

The estimate of soil fertility, namely, water and nutrient availability, and biological activity , is usually made considering soil as being uniform in the reference layer. The potential fertility is thus estimated for homogeneous soil volumes. However, both the soil profile and its horizons are often not homogeneous for many characteristics and pr...

Climate change, land use and management malpractices are increasing the areas of salt-affected soils, threatening soil health and economical sustainability of farms. The causes and processes are manifold and variable in space and time. There is the need to continuously update strategies to tackle salt-affected soils, finding solutions tailored at d...

The diffusion of tree crops has continuously increased during the last decades all over the world. The market boost has favored the adoption of intensive and highly mechanized cultivation, often triggering the degradation of the soil physical-hydrological qualities, mainly through enhanced soil erosion and compaction. Several papers have been publi...

In the European Union, the setting of Operational Groups (OG) is supported by the European Innovation Partnership to tackle specific problems and favor innovation in agriculture. They constitute an important aspect of the current Common Agricultural Policy. Increasing or maintaining soil organic carbon (SOC) content under arable farming has been ac...

At the end of October 2018, a storm of unprecedented strength severely damaged the forests of the eastern sector of the Italian Alps. The affected forest area covers 42,500 ha. The president of one of the damaged regions asked for help from the University of Padua. After eight months of discussion, the authors of this article wrote a consensus text...

The EJP SOIL aims to align and boost research, training and capacity building through joint programming activities co-funded by the European Commission and national research programs. This will reduce current fragmentation and help to find synergies in order to make a leapfrog in research on good agricultural soil management in three main areas: cl...

Dear Colleagues, Preventing and restoring degraded soils is oen difficult. Soils vary so much between regions, farms, and even individual fields that no single solution fits all cases, and therefore, solutions need to be tailored to each local condition. Moreover, the multiplicity and dynamicity of drivers and technologies calls for a continuous dev...

The forests of 473 Italian Alpine municipalities were severely damaged by a strong wind at the end of October 2018. The affected forest area covers 42,500 ha. The president of one of the damaged regions asked for help from the TESAF department of the University of Padua. 26 international scientists (listed: 25; anonymous: 1) responded to the appeal...

The knowledge of farmers' perception about the value of natural resources in agricultural management should have a central role in the orientation of decision-making processes in the rural policy. The final goal of such knowledge is to involve the population in the management of the territory with a bottom-up approach for a sustainable use of natur...

Volcanic soils show peculiar characteristics related to the presence of poorly ordered crystalline minerals. These minerals are highly sensitive to specific spectral bands in the visible and near-infrared (Vis-NIR) regions and could be used to establish important relationships between andic properties and soil classification. In order to overcome t...

Shrub encroachment influences several ecosystem services in drylands worldwide. Yet, commonly used strategies to reduce encroachment show a low medium-term success, calling for a better understanding of its causes. Previous works identified multiple drivers responsible for this phenomenon, including anthropogenic and environmental causes. However,...

This research aimed at testing the use of present and past climosequences to estimate soil organic carbon (SOC) and related physical quality indicators under future climatic conditions. The influence of climate on soil features was studied for four combinations of typical Mediterranean soil types and cropping systems, placed along climosequences of...

Soil is an integral component of the global environmental system which supports the quality and diversity of terrestrial life on Earth. Therefore, it is vital to consider the processes and impacts of soil degradation on society, especially on the provision of environmental goods and services, including food security and climate change mitigation an...

In vineyards, degraded areas characterized by a reduction in quantity or quality of grape production are frequent, even if managed under organic farming. Degradation is mainly caused by soil truncation, soil erosion, or salts enrichment. Recovering strategies implemented in 19 degraded vineyards in 5 countries concerned: (i) composted organic amend...

In viticulture, terroir is a concept used to explain the specific combination and interaction of natural and human factors that provides distinctive characteristics to the wine. The role of soil and geology on wine characteristics is debated and sometimes considered less important than either climate or the human component. The present study, perf...

A study was carried out in nineteen vineyards of five countries, well representative of major viticultural districts, which showed areas with fertility problems, consequence of strong soil erosion occurred during either pre-planting or ordinary cultivation. The comparison between degraded and non-degraded areas highlighted that the soil features li...

Delimited degraded soil areas caused by an improper land preparation before vine plantation and or management can be observed in conventional and organic Euro-pean vineyards. Soil malfunctioning including: poor organic matter content, imba-lanced nutritional status, altered pH, water deficiency, soil compaction and/or scarce oxygenation. The goal o...

In this paper we report an experimental study to assess the process of Sr-isotope uptake from the soil and its transfer to the grapevine and then to the wine made through micro-vinification. The experimental work has been carried out with a deep control of the boundary conditions (i.e., type of soil, geologic substratum, ground water supply, etc.)...

This multidisciplinary research work evaluated the effects of soil erosion on grape yield and quality and on different soil functions, namely water and nutrient supply, carbon sequestration, organic matter recycling, and soil biodiversity, with the aim to understand the causes of soil malfunctioning and work out a proper strategy of soil remediatio...

The Resolve research project set up a multidisciplinary research work to evaluate the effects of possible errors in soil management during pre-planting and vineyard cultivation, leading to severe soil erosion. Different soil functionalities were considered, namely provision of grape yield and quality, water and nutrient supply, carbon sequestration...

Planning new vineyard needs accurate information about soil features and their spatial variability. The use of soil proximal sensors, coupled by few targeted soil observations and analysis, allows to obtain high detailed maps of soil variability at affordable costs. The work shows a methodology to interpolate the proximal sensors data and to deline...

Riassunto. La valorizzazione della vocazione colturale di un territorio può essere uno degli strumenti più efficaci per la tutela della qualità e della "tipicità" degli alimenti, nonché della risorsa suolo dai rischi di degrado. La consapevolezza che la qualità di un prodotto alimentare è strettamente legata ad un particolare ambiente costituisce l...

Le fasi di preparazione di un vigneto, come di molte altre colture pluriennali (frutteti, oliveti, arboricoltura) sono spesso molto impattanti sul suolo, in quanto possono realizzare livellamenti eccessivi, scassi ed arature troppo profonde, spinta frantumazione del substrato roccioso, sproporzionata applicazione di fertilizzanti di fondo e di ripo...

I paleosuoli sono una fonte primaria d'informazioni per documentare i cambiamenti avvenuti in passato, in particolare climatici, e possono essere utilizzati nei modelli che mirano a prevedere le future reazioni del sistema terrestre al mutare delle condizioni ambientali. Un obiettivo centrale della paleopedologia è ricostruire le variazioni climati...

Lo studio delle relazioni fra i caratteri naturali dell'ambiente di produzione e la qualità del vino evidenzia spesso l'esistenza di una specificità, generalmente indicata con il termine di vocazione viticola. L'elemento base della vocazionalità viticola è dunque il territorio, che si materializza in uno spazio geografico all'interno del quale l'op...

Il suolo, definito dall'Unione europea come la parte più esterna della crosta terrestre, situata tra la roccia o il sedimento inalterato e l'atmosfera, è un sistema naturale complesso, multi-fase, che tende ad auto-organizzarsi in conseguenza dell'azione dei fattori della pedogenesi e in particolare dell'attività biologica, che ne determina i maggi...

L'Italia è posta al centro del bacino del Mediterraneo e allo stesso tempo della zona temperata dell'emisfero boreale. L'Italia è quindi per la sua stessa posizione geografica un ecotone molto sensibile ai cambiamenti climatici. La sua vegetazione e i suoi suoli riflettono regimi climatici molto variegati e contrastati. I terreni italiani, spesso r...

This data article describes the soils characterisation, bedrock geochemical composition and descriptive statistics of ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr in wines, soils, labile fractions and saps used to explore the Sr isotope conservation from rocks and soils to vine and wine. These data describe the reproducibility of the isotopic composition of wine over four harvest ye...

There is currently a renewed interest in loess genesis and occurrence in Italy. Well-known loess profiles in northern Italy have been re-examined, and previously unknown loess deposits in central and southern Italy have been reported. This work combines a meta-analysis of published data with new data, presented here for the first time, to provide t...

The present study, performed in one of the largest farm of “Chianti Classico” wine district (Tuscany, Italy), focused on the effect of terroir on the peculiarities of the wine at two different scale of zoning. At a broader scale, the experimental vineyards were selected on the basis of lithology, soil type, morphology and climate and these were cal...

Paleopedology and pedostratigraphy are devoted to the use of buried and relict soils in interpreting the record ofenvironmental conditions that are different from the current ones. As such, paleosols may be used in models thataim at predicting future earth system reactions to changing environmental conditions. Dated paleosols are animportant part o...

High-precision maps of soil features, namely texture, soil organic carbon, gravels, allow monitoring the effects of specific agricultural managements on carbon stock spatial variability. At a field-scale the assessing of soil spatial variability can be improved by using proximal sensors, which permit a quick and cheap recording of data with a high...

Lo scorso 23 novembre è stato organizzato presso il CREA-AA di Cascine del Riccio, Firenze il convegno dal titolo" IL SUOLO NELLA GESTIONE DEL VIGNETO BIO: CONTRIBUTI DALLA RICERCA". Il convegno è parte delle attività del progetto ReSolVe-Restoring optimal Soil functionality in degraded areas within organic Vineyards (Ripristino della funzionalità...

In Italian vineyards, it is quite common to have areas characterized by problems in vine health, grape production and quality, often caused by improper land preparation before vine plantation and/or management. Causes for soil malfunctioning can include reduced contribution of the soil fauna to the ecosystem services such as nutrient cycles and org...

Vitivinicultural “terroir” is a concept referring to an area in which the collective knowledge of the interactions between environment and vitivinicultural practices develops, providing distinctive characteristics to the products. The effect of the environmental components over the terroir wines has been already widely demonstrated, but their possi...

Restoration efforts in the Mediterranean Basin have been changing from a silvicultural to an ecological restoration approach. Yet, to what extent the projects are guided by ecological restoration principles remains largely unknown. To analyse this issue, we built an on-line survey addressed to restoration practitioners.

Core Ideas Proximal sensors have been used for high‐detail mapping of soil C stock at field scale. Laboratory Vis‐NIR spectroscopy allowed an increase in the number of data points. Topsoil spatial variability maps were obtained using field gamma‐ray spectroscopy. Only conventional laboratory analysis was used to calibrate the model (one sample/ha)....

In both conventional and organic Italian vineyards, it is quite common to have areas characterized by problems in vine health, grape production and quality, often caused by improper land preparation before vine plantation and/or management. Causes for soil malfunctioning can include: reduced contribution of the soil fauna to the ecosystem services...

The advantage of a pot system is the possibility to control many variables and factors with a large number of replicates, obtaining statistically significant results in only one year of experimentation. An innovative pot system for the monitoring of grapevine water stress was set up. The system consists of 99 pots of 70 liters, filled by 3 differen...

Soil indicators may be used for assessing both land suitability for restoration and the effectiveness of restoration strategies in restoring ecosystem functioning and services. In this review paper, several soil indicators, which can be used to assess the effectiveness of ecological restoration strategies in dryland ecosystems at different spatial...

Soil indicators may be used for assessing both land suitability for restoration and the effectiveness of restoration strategies in restoring ecosystem functioning and services. In this review paper, several soil indicators, which can be used to assess the effectiveness of ecological restoration strategies in dryland ecosystems at different spatial...

Most small-scale soil maps report dominant typological units and allow only a partial appraisal of pedodiversity since territories with similar dominant soils can actually possess different pedodiversity. This is particularly true at the national scale, where a great wealth of soil information collected at more detailed scales is generalized.A meth...

The Soil Map of Italy at 1: 1,000,000 scale, was the result of the work of Edoardo AC Costantini, Giovanni L'Abate, Roberto Barbetti, Maria Fantappié, Romina Lorenzetti, and Simona Magini affiliated to Research Centre for agrobiology and soil science (CREA-ABP), in collaboration with several regional institutions, universities and other research ce...

Standards to describe soil properties are well established, with many ISO specifications and a few international thesauri available for specific applications. Besides, in recent years, the European directive on “Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE)” has brought together most of the existing standards into a wel...

Using SOM modelling outcomes to support the carbon footprint analysis of industrial crops: a case-study of perennial vs. annual oleaginous crops in Sardinia Region Lorenzo D’Avino *,a, Luca Lazzeri b, Francesco Razza c, Giovanni L’Abate a, Edoardo Costantini a a Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l’analisi dell’economia agraria, Centro di...

Farmers adopting precision viticulture usually subdivide the vineyards through mapping the vigour of the grapevines. However, the reasons of the low vigour of the grapevines are often unclear and not associated to soil functionality. The spatial variabily of soil functionality within vineyards can be mapped at high detail by proximal soil sensing m...

Short-term recovery of soil physical, chemical, microand mesobiological functions in a new vineyard under organic farming

Short-term recovery of soil physical, chemical, microand mesobiological functions in a new vineyard under organic farming

Deep earthwork activities carried out before vineyard plantation can severely affect soil profile properties. As a result, soil features in the root environment are often much more similar to those of the underlying substratum than those of the original profile. The time needed to recover the original soil functions is ecologically relevant and may...

Notions of terroir and their conceptualization through agro-environmental sciences have become popular in many parts of world. Originally developed for wine, terroir now encompasses many other crops including fruits, vegetables, cheese, olive oil, coffee, cacao and other crops, linking the uniqueness and quality of both beverages and foods to the e...