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Piovesan, Gianluca
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Piovesan, Gianluca
Official Name
Gianluca Piovesan
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8603839800
4 results
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- PublicationRestricted2700 years of Mediterranean environmental change in central Italy: a synthesis of sedimentary and cultural records to interpret past impacts of climate on society(2015-03-23)
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;Mesing, S. A. ;Tunno, I.; Univ. degli Studi della Tuscia (Italia) ;Sagnotti, L.; Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione Roma2, Roma, Italia ;Florindo, F.; Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione Roma2, Roma, Italia ;Noble, P.; Univ. Nevada (USA) ;Archer, C.; Univ. Nevada (USA) ;Zimmerman, S.; Lawrence Livermore N. Lab. (USA) ;Pavón-Carrasco, F. J.; Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione Roma2, Roma, Italia ;Cifani, G.; Univ. Tor Vergata (Italia) ;Passigli, S.; Univ. Tor Vergata (Italia) ;Piovesan, G.; Univ. degli Studi della Tuscia (Italia) ;; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; Abrupt climate change in the past is thought to have disrupted societies by accelerating environmental degradation, potentially leading to cultural collapse. Linking climate change directly to societal disruption is challenging because socioeconomic factors also play a large role, with climate being secondary or sometimes inconsequential. Combining paleolimnologic, historical, and archaeological methods provides for a more secure basis for interpreting the past impacts of climate on society. We present pollen, nonpollen palynomorph, geochemical, paleomagnetic and sedimentary data from a high-resolution 2700 yr lake sediment core from central Italy and compare these data with local historical documents and archeological surveys to reconstruct a record of environmental change in relation to socioeconomic history and climatic fluctuations. Here we document cases in which environmental change is strongly linked to changes in local land management practices in the absence of clear climatic change, as well as examples when climate change appears to have been a strong catalyst that resulted in significant environmental change that impacted local communities. During the Imperial Roman period, despite a long period of stable, mild climate, and a large urban population in nearby Rome, our site shows only limited evidence for environmental degradation. Warm and mild climate during the Medieval Warm period, on the other hand, led to widespread deforestation and erosion. The ability of the Romans to utilize imported resources through an extensive trade network may have allowed for preservation of the environment near the Roman capital, whereas during medieval time, the need to rely on local resources led to environmental degradation. Cool wet climate during the Little Ice Age led to a breakdown in local land use practices, widespread land abandonment and rapid reforestation. Our results present a highresolution regional case study that explores the effect of climate change on society for an underdocumented region of Europe.566 220 - PublicationOpen AccessEFFECTS OF HUMAN IMPACTS AND CLIMATE VARIATIONS ON FOREST: THE RIETI BASIN SINCE MEDIEVAL TIME(2013)
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;Mensing, S.; Department of Geography, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, USA ;Tunno, I.; DAFNE, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy ;Cifani, G.; DSFBT, Unversity of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy ;Florindo, F.; Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione Roma2, Roma, Italia ;Noble, P.; Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, USA ;Sagnotti, L.; Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione Roma2, Roma, Italia ;Piovesan, G.; DAFNE, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy; ; ; ; ; ; a number of recent paleoenvironmental studies have argued that abrupt changes in climate have been the primary cause for societal collapse. Many social scientists, including anthropologists and environmental historians, reject environmental explanations as deterministic and overly simplistic. they argue that socio-political decisions contribute to environmental change and that efforts to study societal vulnerability within a human-environment system must include analysis of complex social structures. there is a gap in our understanding of how past societies responded to climate change because there are very few interdisciplinary studies that integrate both physical and behavioral sciences in paleoenvironmental reconstructions. While there is a general sense that modern societies are more insulated than pre-industrial societies from the effects of climate change, this may not prove to be true. a more complete understanding of how both natural and human-caused changes have affected the environment in the past can potentially guide decisions aimed at promoting future sustainability. here we present a project funded by the united states National science foundation that will explicitly integrate paleoenvironmental reconstruction with socioeconomic history in a local context to identify linkages between social and environmental change associated with climate variability.240 114 - PublicationRestrictedLakes as paleoseismic records in a seismically-active, low-relief area (Rieti Basin, central Italy)(2019-05)
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;; ; ; ;Small lakes in low relief areas are atypical candidates for studies on paleoseismicity, but their sediments can contain seismically induced event layers (seismites) generated through strong ground shaking, sediment transport, hydrological reorganization and/or changes in groundwater chemistry and flow. Lakes Lungo and Ripasottile are shallow lakes (<10 m deep) located in the tectonically active Rieti Basin in the central Apennines, Italy, where strong normal faulting earthquakes (Mw 6.5 to 7.0) regularly occur. Sediment cores from these lakes provide paleoseismic indicators for the past similar to 1000 years. Sedimento-logical and geochemical analysis reveals four event layers identified in both lakes that correspond with documented large-scale earthquakes in 1298, 1349, 1639, and 1703 AD. Chronological correlation between earthquakes and paleoseismic features is reliable because of the resolution of sediment dating available for the studied cores. The common physical structure is a physically homogenous bed (homogenite) of re-suspended sediment consisting of a denser, high magnetic susceptibility (kappa) clastic base, with organic matter concentrated above. Co-seismic to post-seismic chemical signatures are associated with some event layers and may represent abrupt or transient shifts to a groundwater-dominated system, or permanent changes in groundwater flow and/or spring discharge. Excursions in delta C-13(org) may represent disruptions or changes in carbon source. Not all event layers show the same features, a result attributed to differences in seismic processes as well as the lake attributes, and anthropogenic modification. The observations made here may provide a new means of detecting paleoseismicity and may be applied to other low relief lakes in seismically active areas. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.144 2 - PublicationRestrictedHistorical ecology reveals landscape transformation coincident with cultural development in central Italy since the Roman Period(2018-02-01)
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;; ; Knowledge of the direct role humans have had in changing the landscape requires the perspective of historical and archaeological sources, as well as climatic and ecologic processes, when interpreting paleoecological records. People directly impact land at the local scale and land use decisions are strongly influenced by local sociopolitical priorities that change through time. A complete picture of the potential drivers of past environmental change must include a detailed and integrated analysis of evolving sociopolitical priorities, climatic change and ecological processes. However, there are surprisingly few localities that possess high-quality historical, archeological and high-resolution paleoecologic datasets. We present a high resolution 2700-year pollen record from central Italy and interpret it in relation to archival documents and archaeological data to reconstruct the relationship between changing sociopolitical conditions, and their effect on the landscape. We found that: (1) abrupt environmental change was more closely linked to sociopolitical and demographic transformation than climate change; (2) landscape changes reflected the new sociopolitical priorities and persisted until the sociopolitical conditions shifted; (3) reorganization of new plant communities was very rapid, on the order of decades not centuries; and (4) legacies of forest management adopted by earlier societies continue to influence ecosystem services today.117 7