ABRESO

The ABRESO project (Abandonment and rebound: Societal views on landscape and land-use change and their impacts on water and soils) launched in 2021 within the Belmont Forum involves five countries: United States, France, Italy, Japan and Taiwan. The project aims to study the impact of land use changes on ecosystem processes in the Critical zone, while analyzing the perception of such changes by different stakeholders and how they are reflected in land management and development policies. The Italian team involves, in addition to CNR-IRET, CNR-IGG (lead institution), CNR-IIA, CNR-IRCrES and the University of Pavia. The ABRESO project in Italy aims to evaluate the effects of land use change on the Alpine arc, in particular the grassland-forest transition. With this objective, three mountain areas of the Alpine arc were selected, two in the Gran Paradiso (Noaschetta) and Val Grande national parks and one on the Tesino plateau. CNR-IRET is specifically responsible for the Tesino experimental site. The project adopts an interdisciplinary approach in which natural and social sciences interact to fully understand land use changes and landscape transformations, using advanced tools such as remote sensing data, socio-economic analyses and ecophysiological studies on the soil-plant system in an integrated way. The aim of these actions is to understand the ways in which geo-biophysical and social landscapes are influenced by environmental and land management policies and the possible impacts on key ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling, plant biodiversity (structural and functional), sustainability and physical-chemical-biological fertility of soils, production of goods and services to support the population and the local economy.