Development of integrated web-based decision support systems (w-SDSS) for the sustainable management of forest and agriculture landscapes

Scientific disciplines applied to the soil-plant-atmosphere system, including forestry and pedology are often claimed to provide proper scientific answers about best suitable landscape management. In spite of these efforts, the results have not always produced significant impact; this is not acceptable considering the present day increase of landscape degradation processes. Here we claim that it is necessary to act in a different way if we aim to achieve a sustainable management of our forest and agriculture landscapes. We believe that such management requires to develop a truly integrated and interdisciplinary spatial knowledge system which is strongly focused on soil-plant-atmosphere interactions. Ideally, such knowledge system must also be based on quantifying soil and landscape multi-functionality and it must allow potential “bottom-up” contributions to landscape governance. In such a scenario recent developments in Spatial Decision Support Systems (S-DSS) developed through the web offer a great opportunity for forestry, pedology and agricultural sciences, in order to provide integrated, consistent and operational tools to support individuals, private companies and public bodies in their everyday management of the rural landscape. More specifically, here we present a contribution aiming to illustrate some interdisciplinary applications, including forestry, obtained through the development a web-based S-DSS project (Life SOILCONSWEB). The system has been developed through a “cyberinfrastructure” platform that supports the acquisition of advanced and also dynamic data (e.g., pedological, daily climatic, land use) and their storage, management and integration, data mining, data visualization and computer applications “on the fly” in order to perform simulation modelling (e.g., soil water balance and growth of plants), all freely accessible via Internet. The w-SDSS system is tested over a case study of 20,000 ha (Telesina Valley; Benevento, Italy); here the system produces accurate information, reporting, maps, scenario analysis, etc. for agriculture, forestry, environment and landscape planning themes. For the forestry module, the system can provide answers such as: (i) forest types; (ii) the average height of forest stands; (iii) the growing stock; (iv) above ground carbon stock, etc.