Michael Maerker

University of Pavia | UNIPV · Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

Landscape sensitivity is a concept referring to the likelihood that changes in land use may affect in an irreversible way physical and chemical soil properties of the concerned landscape. The objective of this study is to quantitatively assess the sensitivity of the southern Alpine soil landscape regarding land use change-induced perturbations. Alp...

Soil erosion is a serious threat to soil functions leading to land productivity decline and multiple off-site effects. Here we show, using a multi-model approach, the spatial risk of soil erosion by water, wind, tillage and harvesting and where the co-occurrence of these different processes is observed. Moreover, we analysed where these locations o...

Gully erosion is known to affect soil productivity, and to limit land use in many parts of the world. To assess the susceptibility of soils to gully erosion, the triggering factors must be analyzed. A simulation of gully development over time was implemented in Python – GIS modules based on the topographic characteristics of the study area, soil pr...

The aim of this work is to assess the sediment dynamics of a small watershed in the Northern Apennines dominated by suspended sediment transport. Therefore, we analysed and correlated the sediment volume concentration and grain size distribution of the suspended sediments with the precipitation pattern. The study area is sited in the Varzi Municipa...

The present work has two main objectives: i) the hydro-geomorphological analysis of the variations of the Lambro River and ii) the assessment of the potential hydrogeological risks in the district of Cologno Monzese, San Maurizio al Lambro, in Central-West Lombardy, Italy. The study area is sited in the Po Plain and is characterised by fluvial and...

The management of Mediterranean agroecosystems is crucial to prevent and mitigate sediment-related threats like soil erosion, water quality issues, or reservoir sedimentation. Hence, the assessment of sediment dynamics at catchment scale is essential for identifying hotspot areas susceptible to sediment loss. Therefore, the identification of type,...

Poster presented at VII Convegno di Geomorfologia, IX Giornata dei Giovani Geomorfologi AIGeo 2022, Palermo.

The Emilian Apennines (Northern Apennines) are among the most landslide-prone areas in Italy, due to the prevalence of weak rocks formations, i.e., arenaceous-pelitic flysch and chaotic mélanges. In the Quaternary, landslide processes have been a major geomorphic factor in shaping the landscape of this area. Indeed, most of the landforms are associ...

Poster presented at SGI-SIMP Congress 2022 (Turin, 19-21 September) during the session "Landslides from mountain to coastal environments and beyond".

Se analiza la dinámica geomorfológica de cuencas y subcuenca de la Región de Coquimbo, Chile, para establecer las condiciones que generan los eventos de 'flashflood' de verano-otoño, asociado a eventos de precipitaciones extremas. Se consideran los eventos ENSO como antecedentes previos de precipitaciones extremas, de invierno. El trabajo realizado...

In times of global change, it is of fundamental importance to understand the sensitivity, stability and resistivity of a landscape or ecosystem to human disturbance. Landscapes and ecosystems have internal thresholds, giving them the ability to resist such disturbance. When these thresholds are quantified, the development of countermeasures can hel...

Gully erosion is known to affect soil productivity, limit land use, and to pose threats on infrastructure in many parts of the world. Gully erosion has been largely neglected because it is difficult to model and visualize its effects. Many gullies grow rapidly to large sizes, making effective control technically difficult and often too expensive. T...

Soil erosion is one of the most challenging environmental issues in the world, causing unsus-tainable soil loss every year. In South Africa, several episodes of gully erosion have been documented and clearly linked to the presence of Quaternary colluvial deposits on the Drakensberg Mountain footslopes. The aim of this study was to identify and asse...

The volumes and dynamics of suspended sediments drained from a watershed are often unknown, especially in small creeks and tributaries where continuous discharge measurements are seldom available. The objective of this study was to assess in a qualitative and quantitative way the sediment dynamics of a small ungauged watershed in the Northern Apenn...

The European Commission's Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection (COM(2012)46) identified soil erosion as an important threat to European Union's (EU) soil resources. Gully erosion is an important but hitherto poorly understood component of this threat. Here we present the results of an unprecedented attempt to monitor the occurrence of gully erosio...

The aim of the present work is to assess the morpho-climatic conditions that trigger area variations of Badlands, in the lower Secchia Basin, Emilia-Romagna region, (Italy). Furthermore, we compare the results of this study with the area variation trends in other Italian regions. The final purpose is to understand and project the future evolution o...

For the estimation of the soil organic carbon stocks, bulk density (BD) is a fundamental parameter but measured data are usually not available especially when dealing with legacy soil data. It is possible to estimate BD by applying pedotransfer function (PTF). We applied different estimation methods with the aim to define a suitable PTF for BD of a...

Soil erosion is generally recognized as the dominant process of land degradation. The formation and expansion of gullies is often a highly significant process of soil erosion. However, our ability to assess and simulate gully erosion and its impacts remains very limited. This is especially so at regional to continental scales. As a result, gullying...

To gain a better understanding of the global application of soil erosion prediction models, we comprehensively reviewed relevant peer-reviewed research literature on soil-erosion modelling published between 1994 and 2017. We aimed to identify (i) the processes and models most frequently addressed in the literature, (ii) the regions within which mod...

To gain a better understanding of the global application of soil erosion prediction models, we comprehensively reviewed relevant peer-reviewed research literature on soil-erosion modelling published between 1994 and2017. We aimed to identify (i) the processes and models most frequently addressed in the literature, (ii) the regions within which mode...

For the estimation of the soil organic carbon stocks, bulk density (BD) is a fundamental parameter but measured data are usually not available especially when dealing with legacy soil data. It is possible to estimate BD by applying pedotransfer function (PTF). We applied different estimation methods with the aim to define a suitable PTF for BD of a...

Soil erosion can present a major threat to agriculture due to loss of soil, nutrients, and organic carbon. Therefore, soil erosion modelling is one of the steps used to plan suitable soil protection measures and detect erosion hotspots. A bibliometric analysis of this topic can reveal research patterns and soil erosion modelling characteristics tha...

Different inter-row agronomical practices can deeply influence the soil properties and the grapevine root development, especially for those vineyards cultivated along steep slopes. Cultivation of grapevines on slope systems represents also a fundamental component of the local economy. This study is aimed at assessing the sustainability of differen...

Cultivation of grapevines in sloping soils is very widespread all over the world, representing also a fundamental branch of the local economy of several hilly zones. Vineyards can be managed in different ways especially in the inter-rows. These management practices may influence deeply soil properties and grapevine root development. Therefore, this...

Grapevine root development can be susceptible to slope instabilities and different inter-row management can affect vine yard soil ecosystem. In this study the traditional techniques of tillage practices were evaluated.The microarthropod community was described by adaptation to soil life (epe-,hemi-and eu-edaphic forms). Molecular based methods was...

Soil erosion is one of the most important environmental problems distributed worldwide. In the last decades, numerous studies have been published on the assessment of soil erosion and the related processes and forms using empirical, conceptual and physically based models. For the prediction of the spatial distribution more and more sophisticated st...

We present a 1:50 000 scale geomorphological map of the upper Mkhomazi River basin, located in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. The sub-horizontal strata of the Permo-Triassic Beaufort Group forms plateau interfluves with a concave valley slope morphology. Locally, thick sequences of late Pleistoce...

Soil erosion represents one of the most important global issues with serious effects on agriculture and water quality, especially in developing countries, such as Ethiopia, where rapid population growth and climatic changes affect widely mountainous areas. The Meskay catchment is a head catchment of the Jemma Basin draining into the Blue Nile (Cent...

Geographic information system (GIS)-based predictive modelling is widely used in archaeology to identify suitable zones for ancient settlement locations and determine underlying factors of their distribution. In this study, we developed predictive models on Roman viticulture in the Laetanian Region (Hispania Citerior-Tarraconensis), using the locat...

In this report, we present the contributions, outcomes, ideas, discussions and conclusions obtained at the PaleoMaps Workshop 2019, that took place at the Institute of Geography of the University of Cologne on 23 and 24 September 2019. The twofold aim of the workshop was: (1) to provide an overview of approaches and methods that are presently used...

From the 1990s onwards several Italian rivers have experienced a recent phase characterized by active-channel widening and, generally, by bed-level stability or slight aggradation. However, its triggering factors and its diffusion, along with the relationship between active-channel planform dynamics and vertical adjustments, are still quite debated...

Cultivation of grapevines in sloping soils is very widespread all over the world, representing also a fundamental branch of the local economy of several hilly zones. Vineyards can be managed in different ways especially the inter-rows. These management practices may influence deeply soil properties and grapevine root development. Therefore, this wo...

The landscape of the surroundings of the Melka Kunture prehistoric site, Upper Awash Basin, Ethiopia, were studied intensively in the last decades. Nonetheless, the area was mainly characterized under a stratigraphic/geological and archaeological point of view. However, a detailed geomorphological map is still lacking. Hence, in this study, we iden...

This is a map of geomorphological processes, forms and features in the surroundings of the Melka Kunture Palaeolithic site, Ethiopia which has to be read in conjunction with the paper by the same authors in Journal of Maps, 15:2, 797-806, DOI: 10.1080/17445647.2019.1669497

Cultivation of grapevines in sloping soils is very widespread all over the world, representing also fundamental branch of local economy of several hilly areas. Vineyards can be managed in different ways. Agronomical practices in inter-rows can be significantly different and may influence deeply the soil properties and the grapevine root development...

Gully erosion is one of the most intensive process of soil erosion in South Africa. The aim of this study is to examine the driving factors for the origin and development of gully forms and features in the upper Mkhomazi basin, KwaZulu-Natal, RSA. The study area covers about 600 km 2 and is characterized by the sedimentary rocks of the Permo-Triass...

ASSESSMENT OF GULLY EROSION IN RELATION TO LITHOLOGY IN THE SOUTHWESTERN ZAGROS MOUNTAINS, IRAN USING ASTER DATA, GIS AND STOCHASTIC MODELING

In this research, we present the lower Scrivia river planform changes occurred from 1878 to 2016. furthermore, we illustrate the channelization-works development and the land-use changes registered close to the riverbed after the 1950s. The Scrivia river is among the most relevant right-bank tributaries of the Po river; it is about 90 km long and o...

Particularly the Liguria region in Northern Italy is highly affected by soil erosion processes. This study was conducted in the Portofino promontory in eastern Liguria, to predict potential annual soil loss using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE). Moreover, we evaluate the relative accuracy of the predictions at detailed scale, using...

In the most ancient wine area of the Controlled Denomination of Origin (DOC) “ OltrepòPavese ” in North-West Italy, foothills of the Apennine mountains, the soils of 14 representative vineyards managed for about 10 years with tillage (T) or natural grass-cover (G) or the alternation of the two methods between the rows (GT), were compared for their...

A geomorphological analysis of the Comau Fjord was carried out to identify geohazards that are a product of current landform dynamics and processes. The geological setting of the area includes fractured metamorphic and volcanic rocks forming steep hillslopes in an active tectonic context due to the Liquiñe-Ofqui Fault Zone (LOFZ). Geomorphological...

A detailed, quantitative, multitemporal analysis of historical maps, aerial photos, and satellite images was performed to investigate the channel planform changes that occurred along the Scrivia River floodplain from 1878 to 2016. Various channel planform features, including channel length, area, width, braiding, sinuosity, lateral migration, activ...

Morphometric Terrain Analysis was successfully applied in different sectors of environmental studies. However, other disciplines, such as archaeology, might also profit from spatially distributed high-resolution terrain information. In this paper, we show how detailed topographic analysis and simple hydrological modelling approaches help to explain...

The question of Anatomically Modern Human (AMH) dispersal from Africa to Europe during the late Pleistocene is one major topic in Paleolithic research, where the use of GIS-techniques and integration of paleoenvironmental data, paleoclimate models and DEM´s has highly increased. However, the challenge remains to integrate data which exists often on...

SOC is the most important indicator of soil fertility and monitoring its space-time changes is a prerequisite to establish strategies to reduce soil loss and preserve its quality. Here we modelled the topsoil (0–0.3 m) SOC concentration of the cultivated area of Sicily in 1993 and 2008. Sicily is an extremely variable region with a high number of e...