Sara Cucchiaro

University of Udine | UNIUD · Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Geophysical Research Abstracts Vol. 17, EGU2015-10133

In the last decade with increasing frequency of extreme weather events, an accurate, sustainable, and effective planning of torrent control structures has become essential to reduce hydro-geomorphic risk. Quite often in planning interventions, there is a lack of information on the effectiveness of existing structures, the evolution of the ongoing h...

Early warning systems for debris flows are low cost measures for mitigating this kind of hazard. The early warning systems provide a timely alert for upcoming events in order to take protective measures, such as closing railways-roads, evacuating people from the threatened areas, and put rescue forces into readiness. These systems usually are senso...

Steep-slope agricultural landscapes cover a small fraction of global agricultural areas.1 Despite the limited coverage, they are relevant for high-quality food and wine production, history, and landscape value. On steep slopes, centuries of effort and tradition have created a unique cultural heritage to be preserved. Here, peculiar traditional loca...

The accuracy assessment confirmed the validity of the method for classification. The volume correlation for CWD depicts the high variability in the considered areas, showing the limitations of the adopted model in terms of correcting classified pixels and therefore true-positive volume. The method, with solid overall accuracy (HF = 0.84; CC = 0.8...

Oxyhydroxides, soil texture and soil organic carbon (SOC) fractions are key parameters determining organic carbon cycling in soils. Standard laboratory methods to determine these soil properties are, however, time–consuming and expensive. Visible near infrared (Vis–NIR) and mid infrared (MIR) spectroscopy have been recognized as a promising alterna...

Terracing is found widely in the Mediterranean and in other hilly and mountainous regions of the world. Yet while archaeological attention to these ‘mundane’ landscape features has grown, they remain understudied, particularly in Northern Europe. Here, the authors present a multidisciplinary study of terraces in the Breamish Valley, Northumberland....

Small, debris-covered and avalanche-fed glaciers are widespread in high-relief areas of the world. However, their climatic response is poorly known because they cannot be investigated with ‘traditional’ techniques, like the glaciological mass-balance method, and long-term observations series are very rare. This work documents changes in elevation,...

51° National Conference of Società Italiana di Agronomia

Terraced landscapes are widely applied in many mountainous regions around the world as a result of the necessity to practice subsistence agriculture. Hence, they can be regarded as one of the most diffused anthropogenic modifications of the Earth’s surface. Different techniques have been used for their implementation leading to the artificial immob...

The presence of roads in steep slope mountain areas is often linked with the occurrence of landslides and erosive dynamics. The use of Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS)-derived high-resolution topographic data increased the possibilities to better represent landscapes and related physical processes at the watershed scale. Additionally, the adoption of...

One of the main environmental threats to sustainability and crop productivity in the agricultural sector is soil erosion. For the mitigation of this problem in agricultural fields, no-till management is considered a key approach. The measurement of soil erosion is particularly challenging, especially when surficial morphological changes are relativ...

Soil erosion is one of the main environmental threats to sustainability and crop productivity in the agricultural sector. In agricultural fields, no-till management is considered a key approach for mitigating soil erosion. The measurement of soil erosion is particularly challenging, especially when surficial morphological changes are relatively sma...

In the last two decades Pinna nobilis, the largest bivalve mollusk endemic to the Mediterranean Sea, has recolonized the tidal flats of some coastal lagoons along the Italian Adriatic coast. In this study, we investigate the influence of tides on the spatial distribution and density of a P. nobilis population developing on a tidal flat of the Venic...

High-resolution topographic (HRT) techniques allow the mapping and characterization of geomorphological features with wide-ranging perspectives at multiple scales. We can exploit geomorphometric information in the study of the most extensive and common landforms that humans have ever produced: agricultural terraces. We can only develop an understan...

Being the most common human-created landforms, terrace construction has resulted in an extensive perturbation of the land surface. However, our mechanistic understanding of soil organic carbon (SOC) (de-)stabilization mechanisms and the persistence of SOC stored in terraced soils is far from complete. Here we explored the factors controlling SOC st...

Drainage network efficiency plays a key role in terms of irrigation and control of floods generation in cultivated areas. A crucial aspect to consider in water resource and flood management risk is the assessment of the network storage capacity. The latter can be reduced by the uncontrolled growth of vegetation that can modify the ditch cross-secti...

Being the most common and widest spread man-made landform, terrace construction has resulted in an extensive perturbation of the land surface. Our mechanistic understanding of soil organic carbon (SOC) (de-) stabilization mechanisms and of the persistence of SOC stored in terraced soils, however, is far from complete. Here we explored the factors c...

UAV-based high-resolution terrain reconstruction allows performing a comparison of geomorphological indicators, able to efficiently describe the evolutionary dynamics affecting a landslides-prone terraced agricultural system over time at the hillslope scale.

In recent years, portable Mobile Mapping Systems (MMSs) are emerging as valuable survey instruments for fast and efficient mapping of both internal and external environments. The aim of this work is to assess the performance of a commercial handheld MMS, Gexcel HERON Lite, in two different outdoor applications. The first is the mapping of a large b...

The development and availability on consumer devices of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have dramatically changed the everyday-life of most of the human population, enabling real time navigation on almost any smart device produced in the last years. However, such strong dependence on the availability of the GNSS limits the further sp...

Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry is increasingly employed in geomorphological applications for change detection, but repeatability and reproducibility of this methodology are still insufficiently documented. This work aims to evaluate the influence of different survey acquisition and processing conditions, including the camera used for im...

Geomorphometric information can be exploited to study the most extensive and common landforms that humans have ever produced: agricultural terraces. An understanding of these historical ecosystems can only be determined through in-depth knowledge of their origin, evolution, and current state in the landscape. These factors can ultimately assist in...

Among the environmental problems that could affect agriculture, one of the most critical is ponding. It may be defined as the water storage on the surface in concavities and depressions due to soil saturation. Stagnant water can seriously affect crops and the management of agricultural landscapes. It is mainly caused by prolonged rainfall events, s...

Terraces are highly productive, culturally distinctive socioecological systems. Although they form part of time/place-specific debates, terraces per se have been neglected – fields on slopes or landscape elements. We argue that this is due to mapping and dating problems, and lack of artefacts/ecofacts. However, new techniques can overcome some of t...

The presence of roads is closely linked with the activation of land degradative phenomena such as landslides. Factors such as ineffective road management and design, local rainfall regimes, and specific geomorphological elements actively influence landslide occurrence. In this context, recent developments in digital photogrammetry (e.g., Structure...

Terraces and lynchets are ubiquitous worldwide and can provide increasingly important Ecosystem Services (ESs), which may be able to mitigate aspects of climate change. They are also a major cause of non-linearity between climate and erosion rates in agricultural systems as noted from alluvial and colluvial studies. New research in the ‘critical zo...

This paper presents debris-flow data recorded in the Moscardo Torrent (eastern Italian Alps) between 1990 and 2019. In this time interval, 30 debris flows were observed: 26 of them were monitored by sensors installed on the channel, while four were only documented through post-event observations. Monitored data consist of debris-flow hydrographs, m...

Agricultural landscapes cover a significant part of the Earth. In floodplains, we can find large areas dedicated to intensive agriculture. However, also on hills and mountains, agricultural activity can be relevant from the socio-economic point of view. Nowadays, such areas are increasingly under threat because of global environmental changes. Wide...

The presentation was proposed at the online workshop of the Italian Society of Agricultural Engineering (AIIA), entitled " Remote Sensing for Land Degradation Analysis and Sustainable Management of Agroforestry Systems".

Overview and research experiences regarding UAV-based GIS applications in the multi-temporal analysis of landslides activated in terraced agricultural systems.

The cultivation of steep slopes is a widespread practice in hilly and mountainous areas around the world. Such environments often result in particular agricultural systems linked with unique local values of historical and cultural heritage, economy, and food security. However, steep‐slope agriculture is inherently exposed to slope instability proce...

The response of very small glaciers to climate changes is highly scattered and little known in comparison with larger ice bodies. In particular, small avalanche-fed and debris-covered glaciers lack mass balance series of sufficient length. In this paper we present 13 years of high-resolution observations over the Occidentale del Montasio Glacier, c...

This paper presents debris-flows data recorded in the Moscardo Torrent (eastern Italian Alps) between 1990 and 2019. In this time interval, 30 debris flows were observed, 26 of them were monitored by sensors installed on the channel, while four were only documented through post-event observations. Monitored data consist of debris-flow hydrographs,...

Agricultural terraced landscapes, which are important historical heritage sites (e.g., UNESCO or Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) sites) are under threat from increased soil degradation due to climate change and land abandonment. Remote sensing can assist in the assessment and monitoring of such cultural ecosystem services....

High-Resolution Topography (HRT) data sets are becoming increasingly available, improving our ability and opportunities to monitor geomorphic changes through multi-temporal Digital Terrain Models (DTMs). The use of repeated topographic surveys enables inferring the sediment dynamics of hazardous geomorphic processes such as floods, debris flows, an...

Geoarchaeological studies have benefits from new technological developments in remote-sensing technologies that have become an integral and important part of the archeological researches. In particular, structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry is one of the most successful emerging techniques in high-resolution topography (HRT) and provides excep...

The poster presents an overview of the Moscardo Torrent monitoring system and the main results of the most recent research in the catchment. Future development of the monitoring site is also outlined.

Check dams represent one of themost common hydraulic engineering solution to manage debris-flow risk. However, the design of these structures only rarely considers their impact on sediment connectivity and sediment fluxes, both at the channel reach and catchment scale. In the last two decades, High-Resolution Topography (HRT) provided fundamental d...

Among the environmental problems that could affect agriculture, one of the most critical is ponding. Ponding is the water storage on the surfaces in concavities or small depressions, due to soil saturation. It can seriously affect crops and the management of agricultural landscapes. It is caused by prolonged rainfall events, soil type, or by wrong...

Torrent control works have always been a fundamental tool for preventing torrential hazard in mountain catchments, where the sediment transport phenomena as debris flows are one of the most dangerous geomorphic processes affecting small steep basins. The linkages between sediment source areas on the hillslopes and channel network, along with the te...

Torrent control works, such as grade control dams and sediment retention dams, are structural measures for controlling debris flows and debris floods. In spite of the widespread presence of such hydraulic structures in steep mountain streams worldwide, there are still few studies monitoring the effects of check dams on sediment dynamics. The use of...

The study of fast geomorphic changes in mountain channels and hillslopes, driven by intense geomorphic processes, requires frequent and detailed topographic surveys. In the last two decades, high-resolution topography (HRT) has provided new opportunities in the Earth Sciences. These have benefited from important developments in surveying techniques...

In recent years, the combination of Structure-from-Motion (SfM) algorithms and UAV-based aerial images has revolutionised 3D topographic surveys for natural environment monitoring, offering low-cost, fast and high quality data acquisition and processing. A continuous monitoring of the morphological changes through multi-temporal (4D) SfM surveys al...

The Moscardo Torrent (eastern Italian Alps) is a small rugged catchment (drainage area 4.1 km 2 , range in elevation between 890 and 2043 m) frequently affected by debris flows that deliver large amounts of sediment to the receiving stream, and cause concerns for infrastructures located on the alluvial fan and near the confluence. Over the last dec...

WHY: high resolution repeat Digital Elevation Models allow understanding the effects of torrent control works on sediment dynamics and, consequently, provide relevant information to improve management strategies and torrent control planning in highly dynamic catchments. WHAT: A standardized workflow for data-acquisition, post-processing and uncerta...

COST - Connecteur Meeting Prague 2016

The integration of high-resolution topographic data, resulting from different technologies such as Aerial Laser Scanner (ALS), Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) and GPS, was used to generate, through a “data fusion” process, a series of multi temporal Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) with 1 m resolution. These DTMs, were in turn used to evaluate the eff...