U.S.-Italy Cooperative Research: Comparative International Research on Agricultural Land-Use History and Forest Management Practices in Italy and the United States

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0132684LatzThis two-year award for US-Italy collaboration on comparative research on agricultural land-use history and forest management involves Gil Latz of Portland State University and Mauro Agnoletti of the University of Florence, Italy. The research will include comparative study of policies and legal instruments for conserving sites, and evaluation of opportunities and master planning for sustainable forestry and agriculture. In particular, the research will focus on Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques for construction of a multipurpose land-use map of the Spanocchia estate and its comparison to the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller (MBR) National Historical Park, and on proposals for possible conservation options. The US researcher brings to this collaboration expertise in sustainable management of forest parks, focusing on historic land-use patterns and forest management practices that have been restored. This is complemented by Italian expertise in the creation of a topographic database and a digital model of the territory, digitization of the Tuscan Cadastre of 1832 and aerial and remote sensing information, and field work to check aerial interpretations. The results of this research are expected to contribute to contemporary forest certification policy, by gauging the impact of historical information. These results are expected to be particularly useful to subsequent analysis, comparison, and dissemination of strategies for sustainable forest management to a broad public of policy managers and landowners throughout the world.