Mauro Agnoletti – författare

This edited volume reviews 20 years’ worth of research under the European Landscape Convention. The authors from the research network UNISCAPE offer readers insights into their combined efforts to carry out and support the goals of a sustainable European landscape. 20 years after defining these original goals, the editors make landscape ecology and management, a cornerstone for the debate on a 21st century Europe.

The numerous contributions cover the three major areas of Landscape Policy and Governance, Landscape Design and Time and Observing Landscape. The pan-European approach highlights the strength of international collaboration and interdisciplinary thinking.

This book offers the collected knowledge as a working tool for researchers, scholars and professionals in landscape ecology.

The book explain the history of the italian forest landscape from preroman times to the present. The aim is to demonstrate that all the Italian forest have been shaped by human activities through the centuries and they are an important component of the Italian cultural landscape. The content explores case studies from the north to the south of Italy explaining how human activities shaped extension, density, species composition and structure of the forests in order to meet the need of the society, as well as influencing their ecological features. Timber, fuel wood, charcoal production , as well as shipbuilding, are taken into consideration, but also forest managed for food production( eg. Chestnut forests, wood pastures, pine forests ). Cases such as Venice and the silviculture developed by monasteries are described. The history of the afforestation made by the Italian state in response to climate crisis is also considered as well as case studies related to specific management forms as those related to fires. Management methods such high stand and coppice are explained addressing also the many different traditional practices adopted by the local populations ( selective cutting, pollarding, shredding etc.). The book also shows how forests have doubled their extension since the second world on abandoned farmed land.

This book is an introductory instrument to the main themes of environmental history, illustrating its development over time, methodological implications, results achieved and those still under discussion. But the overriding aspiration is to show that the doubts, methods and knowledge elaborated by environmental history have a heuristic value that is far from negligible precisely in its attitude to the most consolidated major historiography. For this reason, this book gives an overview of environmental history as it is an essential component of the basic knowledge of global history. At the same time, it introduces specific aspects which are useful both for anyone wanting to deepen his/her studies of environmental historiography and for those interested in one of the many disciplinary areas – from rural history to urban history, from the history of technology to the history of public health, etc. with which environmental history develops a dialogue.