Past and on-going projects
Before the DESIRE Project, the area was partially unknown for many of the topics on erosion and soil degradation processes at the level of detail in which the DESIRE project is involved (field scale). The research done related to desertification process has been performed at national/regional level, producing regional maps of desertification risk (Ferrara et al. 2005) at scale 1:700.000- 1:1.000.000 (DESERTNET http://www.basilicatanet.it/desertnet/), based on mainly the MEDALUS methodology developed by Kosmas et al. (1999).
Currently the IMAGE Project (www.projectimage.eu) is working in the Basilicata part of the Ofanto valley that includes the Rendina study site. Objective of this project is to defining an integrated strategy for water resource management which coordinates the players involved at: administrative/political scale; management/distribution scale; end-user/local community scale. For each level, specific strategies to combat drought, salinization and desertification are needed. The development of a Water and Rural Development Support System (WARDSS), a web-based open-source software, will assist institutions in decision making processes on sustainable use of natural resources and rural development. At the moment of writing (March 2009) the partial or definitive results of the project are yet not available for the public. The coordinator of the Image Project (Dr. Gianni Quaranta) is the other Italian partner in the DESIRE Project.
Previous activities by the CNR-IRPI in the Rendina site were limited to geomorphologic and geological mapping relative to the slopes of the hydrographical right side of the reservoir. Only some data on sediment yield were available for the period 1953-1983. Land use maps are available from Italian scientific literature published in 1963 and 1988. The details of these maps allows only approximate quantitative comparison with the present land use distribution, but they allow an immediate idea of the expansion of arable lands since 1963 due to land levelling of badlands areas and the establishment of cereal crops in previous marginal lands (approximate 10% of. the entire watershed).
