The Impact of Late Holocene Flood Management on the Central Po Plain (Northern Italy)
The Impact of Late Holocene Flood Management on the Central Po Plain (Northern Italy)
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DOI：
10.3390/su10113968
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发表时间：
2018-11-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Cremaschi, Mauro
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Brandolini, Filippo;Cremaschi, Mauro
河流环境在人类历史上一直扮演着至关重要的角色。农业需要肥沃的土地和淡水，这使得人们比在其他环境中更频繁地定居在洪泛区。洪泛平原是一个复杂的人-水系统，人类活动与环境相互作用影响着洪泛平原景观的发展。本文通过对意大利中部波河平原（Central Po Plain, Italy）的地貌、考古和历史资料的综合记录，分析了中世纪时期波河平原的演变。西罗马帝国的崩溃（公元5世纪）与大面积洪泛区的逐渐涝灾同时发生。研究结果揭示了后罗马时期土地和水资源管理活动对景观演变的影响。特别是，通过洪水管理措施开发河流沉积物具有开垦沼泽的效果，但也改变了该地区的自然地貌发展。即便如此，中世纪的人类活动与自然系统的平衡程度要高于后来文艺复兴时期大规模的土地开垦工程，后者深刻地改变了景观，将湿地环境变成了今天可见的耕地。分析河流古环境及其与过去人类活动的关系，可以为未来规划更可持续的城市化冲积景观提供有价值的指示。
Fluvial environments have always played a crucial role in human history. The necessity of fertile land and fresh water for agriculture has led populations to settle in floodplains more frequently than in other environments. Floodplains are complex human-water systems in which the mutual interaction between anthropogenic activities and environment affected the landscape development. In this paper, we analyzed the evolution of the Central Po Plain (Italy) during the Medieval period through a multi-proxy record of geomorphological, archaeological and historical data. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire (5th century AD) coincided with a progressive waterlogging of large floodplain areas. The results obtained by this research shed new light on the consequences that Post-Roman land and water management activities had on landscape evolution. In particular, the exploitation of fluvial sediments through flood management practices had the effect of reclaiming the swamps, but also altered the natural geomorphological development of the area. Even so, the Medieval human activities were more in equilibrium with the natural system than with the later Renaissance large-scale land reclamation works that profoundly modified the landscape turning the wetland environment into the arable land visible today. The analysis of fluvial palaeoenvironments and their relation with past human activities can provide valuable indications for planning more sustainable urbanized alluvial landscapes in future.