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The steep Mediterranean catchments underwent drastic socio economic changes in the last decades. Moreover, these basins are also subject to climate variability and potential future climate change effects. Due to mechanization in agriculture a lot of surfaces changed from terraced vineyards and olive growth to abandoned land. The terraced areas are less productive and more cost and labour intensive and hence cannot compete with a highly mechanized agriculture. Furthermore, tourism based on the natural and cultural heritage of the region is more and more important for the income of the inhabitants. The abandonment has effects on the entire landscape system in terms of hydrological dynamics, sediment dynamics as well as soil characteristics and the terraces itself. These changes are leading to a succession in vegetation, destabilization of slope systems, and changes on the runoff and sediment discharges leading to disasters such as the Vernazza event on the 25.10.2011 or the Messina event on the 01.10.2009. In this study, we present a comparison between the two mentioned areas located respectively in Liguria in the Cinque Terre National park (World heritage site-UNESCO) and in the Messinean area, Sicily (Italy) and a test of transferability aimed to assess debris flow susceptibility. In the framework of this research extensive fieldwork, remote sensing and terrain analysis have been performed in order to parameterize both stochastic and physically based models. Moreover, few attempts of reproducing extreme events have been made. The results show that these Mediterranean catchments are highly sensitive to changes in landuse and climate. Hence, the study contributes to the understanding of landscape dynamics under global change conditions.

Soils are a vital part of the natural environment and one of the most important natural resources. The European Mediterranean Regions are particularly sensitive to soil degradation. Especially in Italy many landscapes are prone to water related soil erosion processes such as rill-interrill erosion (sheet erosion), gullies and complex processes forming “calanchi” corresponding to the English term “Badlands”. Calanchi develop preferentially on Plio-Pleistocene deposits, which are highly susceptible to aquatic erosion processes. This study focusses on the assessment of rill-interrill erosion as well as calanchi erosion forms and features in previously none or very little-studied areas of the Langhe-Roero and Monferrato, located in the Liguria and Piedmont Region, Northern Apennines, Italy. In this study we assess the driving factors and the spatial distribution of rill-interrill and calanchi erosion processes using a geostatistical/geostochastic modelling framework. Therefore, a Maximum Entropy Model, a Generalized Linear Model and a Boosted Regression Tree approach were applied. As independent environmental variables we selected DEM based morphometric information as well as pedologic, and geologic input data. Moreover, we explore remote sensing techniques to derive information on the vegetation density and vitality. The stochastic models applied show, that the two very different soil erosion phenomena can be differentiated well with the chosen stochastic techniques. The main drivers controlling the spatial distribution of aquatic soil erosion in the study area are soil type, slope, elevation and topographic wetness index. The results of the MaxEnt and BRT model were confirmed by the GLM application in terms of the significance of predictor variables. Generally, the models show an acceptable to excellent performance with BRT and GLM outperforming MaxEnt. The single independent variable response curves gave valuable insights into the process triggering the erosion forms. We were able to clearly differentiate between the processes looking at the response curves that show reasonable characteristics with all applied models.

The bast scale (Matsucoccus feytaudi) is responsible for the destruction of most of the Pinus pinaster forests in the Mediterranean area, causing resination, defoliation and subsequent death of the trees. This study was carried out in Cinque Terre National Park (Italy), in which pinewood are partially affected by the bast scale M. feytaudi. A whole system evaluation is here proposed aiming at the assessment of the impacts, both on the environmental and economic side, arising from the P. pinaster losses in a certain territory. To this aim we compared a pinewood without visible damages from bast scale with a clearly damaged pinewood by means of emergy analysis. Bast scale reduced the arboreal composition of the stand favouring understorey species sprouting, which benefitted of increasing sunlight level caused by affected tree crowns reduction or trees fall. As a consequence of the changed forest's condition the system suffered an ecosystem services provision loss equal to 2250 Em€ ha-1 year-1 that, if extended to the entire surface of the Cinque Terre National Park lead to a total loss of a million of Euro per year.