1st day “Pre-symposium field trip”
Participants will be welcomed in Rome. After a short briefing, participants will move by bus to the location of the first field trip site in Civita di Bagnoregio. After the exploration of Civita di Bagnoregio, participants will move to Perugia, the main symposium location.
2nd and 3rd days “Symposium event”
Participants will attend two full days of oral and poster presentations. The symposium will be run as a single plenary session. Posters will be introduced in the first part of the morning and afternoon session by 2-minute talks. Over the two days, participants will engage in thematic sessions and poster presentations, delving into various aspects of gully erosion and related topics. The symposium will feature a diverse range of thematic sessions, covering topics such as erosion processes, land use evaluation, land management strategies, ecological restoration, and interdisciplinary approaches to addressing gully erosion. Poster presentations will provide participants with the opportunity to showcase their research findings and engage in fruitful discussions with fellow attendees. A total of 46 oral talks and 60 poster talks will be guaranteed considering a time slots of 7 hours per day.
4th day “Main conference field trip”
Participants will be move by bus to the Crete Senesi area, Val d’Orcia (UNESCO SITE) to visit gully locations and discuss their formation, development and control under anthropogenic historical pathways.
5th day “Team Building and Networking Day”
The final day of the congress will be dedicated to fostering collaboration and networking among participants. Through interactive workshops, roundtable discussions, and idea exchanges, attendees will have the opportunity to strengthen professional connections, through collaborations and brainstorm innovative research ideas.
FIELD TRIPS
The proposed field trips focus on areas of Central Italy characterized by highly erodible outcrops. Gully erosion has extensively reshaped badland systems, locally known as “calanchi” and “biancane”. Visiting these areas will allow the participants to witness the complex relationship between man and the eroding environment. On one hand, these mediterranean sub-humid badland areas can be ideal sites to investigate the human impact on erosion in a context of global change, as their origin has been related to historical scenarios of widespread land degradation. On the other hand, strong land use changes have completely modified the landscapes, with the aim of mitigating erosion, resulting in spectacular rural landscapes nowadays considered part of the UNESCO World Heritage List as Cultural landscapes.
Pre-conference field trip: “Civita di Bagnoregio”
Civita di Bagnoregio, nestled in the picturesque landscapes of Lazio region, serves as an ideal location to explore gully erosion. This ancient hilltop town, known as the “dying city,” is characterized by its unique geological formations, including volcanic rock overlapping marine and continental deposits. The old town rests on the so-called “Valle dei calanchi” (calanchi badland valley): deep ravines and gullies are carved into the soft clays underlying the tuffaceous rock. These last are diffusely affected by landslide phenomena, that trigger the dying city existence. These geological features bear witness to centuries of erosion, highlighting the delicate balance between natural processes and human settlements. Participants will have the opportunity to witness firsthand the effects of gully erosion on the landscape and engage in discussions on effective mitigation strategies. The only way of access into the old town is represented by a bridge that has replaced an old clayey pathway that has been degraded by progressive erosion during recent history. The richness of historical sources and witnesses from pre-Roman Age through the late Middle Ages, topographical and cadastral maps from the early 18th century, along with other historical documents, provide evidence of the gradual erosion of the cliff due to landslides and erosion processes.
The Landslide Museum of Civita di Bagnoregio is a small museum located in Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy. This museum is dedicated to showcasing the geological phenomenon of landslides and the impact they have had on the historic town of Civita di Bagnoregio. Through exhibits, artifacts, and interactive displays, visitors can learn about the history of the town, its vulnerability to landslides due to its location atop a plateau of friable volcanic rock, and efforts to preserve and protect the site. The visit of the museum, along with dedicated discussions and confrontations in the field, provides valuable insights into the geological forces shaping the landscape and the ongoing challenges faced by communities living in erosion and landslide prone areas.
Main conference field trip: “Crete Senesi and Val d’Orcia”
The second field trip will take participants to the mesmerizing region of Crete Senesi and Val d’Orcia in Tuscany. Here, amidst the rolling hills and distinctive clayey terrain, lies a landscape shaped by both natural forces and human intervention. Over three millenia, human activities, including agriculture and urbanization, have left their marks on the land, transforming it into a mosaic of cultivated fields, woodlands, and iconic white clay formations known as “biancane.” Here, climatic oscillations, demographic variations, economics, epidemics, famines, and wars have often transformed sustainable land uses into environment destabilizing uses, the consequences having been erased only recently. The actual rural landscape of the Val d’Orcia is the result of an intense land reclamation program, where calanchi and biancane badlands are a remnant of a more widespread pattern of erosion that was addressed by extensive land levelling. Here, the convergence of a lithological unit particularly prone to denudation, wetting-drying cycles typical of the Mediterranean climate and widespread steep hillslopes related to a context of uplift, has led to pervasive water erosion processes, and the formation of typical badlands.
This excursion will provide insight into the complex interplay between human activities and landscape evolution, offering valuable lessons for addressing gully erosion and land degradation.
Visitors will have the opportunity to know the recent researches on water erosion monitoring (including limitations and difficulties of different techniques), the intrinsic and external factors predisposing these soils to erosion, geomorphological hazards assessment, the effects of human-induced land use modifications to the hillslope-channel sediment dynamics, dendrogeomorphological analysis for exploring denudation.
