Landscapes with a deep history of land use are the legacy of millennial interactions between ecological, social and cultural elements, which can be investigated to obtain new knowledge about our present-day ecosystems. This paper presents the application of a supervised contextual post-classification technique to extract, from a single orthoimage, geospatial objects (classes) representing different temporalities of the same land use in a historical landscape. With a rural area of Sicily as case study and its century-old olive trees as geospatial ‘control points’, we analyse the degree of category similarity between historica lly contingent classes of the same land use. We map and interpret from present space their dynamics of change and persistence over time, cross-validating our results with evidence from local plant microfossils (phytoliths) analysis. We demonstrate how Earth observation products and contextual geospatial analysis are multidimensional sources of information enriching our understanding of past-present landscapes and their biocultural heritage.

Agricultural systems are central to human well-being, providing food, materials, and medicines. However, intensive farming practices drive significant environmental degradation, which is exacerbated by challenges such as climate change and unequal global consumption patterns. Increasing evidence suggests that biodiversity in agricultural systems, encompassing the diversity of crop species and varieties that support agroecosystem functioning and human values, could be a crucial asset in supporting transformations towards sustainability. While agrobiodiversity is under threat due to various human and environmental pressures, crop diversity trends, particularly at the local scale, as well as the drivers of these trends, are insufficiently addressed. This symposium addresses this gap by emphasising the role of Indigenous and local knowledge in understanding crop diversity management and its dynamics through time and space. The articles in this symposium examine crop diversity trends in understudied regions, employing methods rarely used in agrobiodiversity studies, including semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and participatory workshops. Overall, the works presented here reveal a decline in the diversity of traditional crop species and varieties, as well as the adoption of high-yielding varieties influenced by economic, political, climatic, and sociocultural factors. Key findings highlight the nuanced insights of Indigenous and local knowledge into these trends, providing a deeper understanding of the role of agrobiodiversity in sustainability and adaptive strategies. A key implication of the findings presented here is the need for more inclusive policies that recognise the importance of complementing plural knowledge systems in supporting diversified agroecological cropping systems grounded in diverse socio-cultural values and lifestyles. This evidence emphasises the importance of integrating socio-cultural drivers and evolving demographics more effectively into future research. A more holistic approach is crucial for developing adaptive and, consequently, resilient agricultural systems that thrive in the face of local and global challenges while preserving agrobiodiversity for future generations.

Within the multidisciplinary framework of historical ecology, in this study plant morphology, oral history, and soil analyses are combined with phytoliths to reconstruct shifts in management and environment of historical and living olive agroecosystems on the island of Sicily (Italy). The use of phytoliths in the study of historical agroecosystems is still a developing field. We present the collaborative work done on three historical olive agroecosystems (Bosco Pisano, a wild olive wood; Cozzo del Lampo, a Mediterranean olive orchard; Malìa, remnant of past agroforestry), where we have collected and analyzed phytolith assemblages to trace correlations between environmental dynamics and (agri)culture, as unfolding over the latest six millennia. We demonstrate that the cumulative ecological legacies in historical agroecosystems are traceable through phytolith analyses. Bosco Pisano allows for a calibration of the tree cover density, based on phytolith evidence. Meanwhile, Cozzo del Lampo and Malìa have evolved from a shrubland-type of environment to fruit gardens and open grasslands, with establishment of olive trees in between as key vegetation elements. Both these examples show the longevity of combined land uses, especially the grazing adapted olive cultivation in Malìa. In gaining clues on clear variations in land use, as abandonment and intensification, our results demonstrate that phytoliths can shed light also in local past intercultural exchange of knowledge. The integrated methodology presented here allows to appreciate how the biological and cultural diversity in historical agroecosystems has shaped their current state and inspires present-future management.

Current environmental crises call for an integrated knowledge of landscapes and their ecosystems in a broader sense. This article presents a pedagogical framework for cross-disciplinary landscape research at postgraduate level. The framework is grounded in the use of geospatial epistemic discomfort as a creative force to develop and enhance inquiry skills able to cross and merge disciplinary boundaries. Developed within the Erasmus+ KA2 project “CROSSLAND”, the pedagogical framework is based on the scaffolding of epistemic discomfort through four key didactic elements: 1) cross-disciplinary group work and open-ended assignment, 2) in-field inquiry as pre-training on space-time, 3) replacement of traditional lectures by student-led seminars, 4) GIS labs centred on the exploration of cross-disciplinary portfolios of geospatial approaches and methods given as worked-out examples. Main results from the evaluation of the framework implementation in a Summer School show how learning cross-disciplinarity happened thanks to a scaffolding that allowed, first and foremost, the socialisation of different conceptualisations of space. While students felt at ease with geospatial epistemic discomfort, we can conclude that spatial cognitive processes are powerful in improving abilities beyond the spatial domain. 

Phytoliths can be used to reconstruct human-nature dynamics over the long term (from decennial to centennial and millennial time scales) and may capture activities that cannot be reconstructed through other proxies. Phytoliths consist of fossil biogenic silica (BSi), formed in plant organs and then released into the soil with plant decay. When working in environmental contexts where the phytolith signal is highly diluted, as is the case in environments with a long history of land use, animal-plant interactions and open woody environments, the extraction of phytoliths remains a challenge. To address this issue, we developed an efficient method for the extraction of biogenic silica (BSi) from sediments and soils of contexts characterised by the long-term human and animal presence and disturbance, such as remnants of old agroforestry systems.

The method we developed has a number of advantages, including:

• An easy and time-efficient methodology to perform (with an overall processing time of 1.5/2 days for a batch of 16 samples)

• An extraction method free from dangerous chemicals

• A method amenable to non-experts without a prior background in lab extraction procedures.

Intercropping landscapes characterised by the presence of certain plant features are usually considered traditional landscapes, important for their biocultural heritage. In recent decades, olive agroforestry systems previously widespread throughout Sicily have transitioned to monocultures alongside the disappearance of other tree species. To analyse the dynamics of land use, we combine mathematical representations and oral narratives of spatial change, focussing our case study on a rural area of inner Sicily, Cozzo del Lampo, characterised by a high presence of century-old olive trees. By using local geonarratives in combination with the results of change detection analysis using historical aerial images spanning 50 years (1955 - 2005), we gain insights into the relationality of people and places over time, highlighting how biocultural heritage is correlated to both local culture and ecology, and demonstrating the value of ecological perspectives to understand past and current human actions. The active engagement of the local population in the interpretation of their own (past-present) practices is key to access new ecological knowledge.

The qualitative dimensions of visible features in space can be captured by connecting spatial configurations arranged in a variety of different ways to diverse conceptual spaces. By conceptual spaces, we intend mental concepts describing specific spatial configurations present in a geographical area, defined by the contextual relationships among their constitutive elements. This paper presents a new supervised post-classification method allowing the extraction of semantically complex spatial objects from a single image of the Earth as, for instance, diverse conceptual spaces referring to multiple dimensions of land use (temporal, cultural, social, etc.). Computationally, our method is operationalised by CONTEXTS.py (CS.py), a plugin written in Python for QGIS. CS.py relies on training areas, defined by the user at diverse scales, to identify and extract in the input image conceptual spaces whose spatial contexts have the same spatial features present in the training areas. Applied to a case study on the island of Sicily, where millennial land use dynamics have resulted in a mosaic landscape, CS.py could detect from an orthophoto diverse conceptual spaces of land use in an area ordinarily classified as one land cover, thus expanding the capabilities of geospatial analysis to reach additional qualitative dimensions of information from image data. • CS.py simplifies a supervised contextual post-classification routine in an easy-to-use, practical and accessible QGIS plugin; • CS.py joins a family of tools for supervised object-based classification (e.g. OTB, GRASS), providing, additionally, the possibility to include contextual information as spatial criteria to train the classification routine. • CS.py has broad applications in different disciplines investigating landscape from quantitative and qualitative perspectives, allowing both, as in multiple environments.

In the middle of the Mediterranean sea, historically characterised by large spatial and temporal climate variability, the island of Sicily, a unique ethnic and cultural crossroad for millennia, has not been spared by global warming and environmental change. On the island, remote rural areas suffer today the severe progressive degradation of their biocultural heritage, accompanied by serious marginalisation due to contrasting and simultaneous processes of rural depopulation and land abandonment on the one side and agricultural intensification on the other. This chapter looks at climate and environmental changes as reported by locals in one of these remote areas, the Morello Valley, a fluvial system in central Sicily, and compares local observations with temperature and rainfall data collected by the nearest meteorological stations. Then, inspired by historical ecology, the chapter discusses the results of a longer-term reconstruction of the climatic, environmental, and societal past of this part of Sicily, covering the entire Holocene. Conclusions highlight the importance of taking into account both different spatial and temporal scales when approaching the climate discourse, cultural constructs derived from socio-cultural and historical events, and contemporary and place-based local perceptions.

Seasonal cycles in plants and animals drive key timings of human practices in an agrosystem like the best time for harvest, planting, or pruning. Within the framework of historical phenological studies, we attempt a reconstruction of the olive (Olea europaea L.) phenology along millennia. Thanks to its extraordinary longevity, the olive tree is a living proxy from the past and embodies a still uncollected long-term memory of ecological behaviors. A cultural keystone species, olive cultivation has more and more played a crucial role for biodiversity conservation, livelihood of rural communities and their enrooted cultural identity in the whole Mediterranean. By compiling traditional phenological knowledge from historical written sources and oral traditions, and using it as historical bio-indicator of the linkage between human ecological practices and seasonal changes of plant behavior, we compiled a monthly ecological calendar of the olive tree covering the last similar to 2800 years. As a case study, we chose a special place: Sicily, unique for its position in the Mediterranean, geomorphology and legacies in the form of cross-temporal accumulated eco-cultures. Such a sui generis ecological calendar provides an additional case study to explore the intertwining of plant behavior and human adaptation strategies and the interplay between cultural diversity, ecological disturbance and phenological stability. All of this, in turn, can inform action for the present and future sustainable management of these millennial trees.

Groves with ancient olive trees (Olea europaea L.) could be considered remnants of old agroforestry systems. Anything but static, these agro-ecosystems have undergone drastic transformational processes in Mediterranean countries, where abandonment or intensification have been observed far more than continuity, expansion or renaissance, leading to environmental degradation of rural areas. Starting from this assumption and inspired by historical ecology and historical geography, we consider centuries-old olive trees as living archives of human-nature interactions and are thus proxies of past agroforestry. Our aim is to better understand what has driven dynamics of change and persistence, happening today as well as in the past. We first travel backward in time, looking at the ecology of land management systems during the Roman period (ca 200 BC-400 AD) and late Antiquity (ca AD 400-700). The special focus is the island of Sicily, the granary of the Empire, well known as a region where cereal production increased around the latifundia economy. We reconstruct the diversity of land tenure and the ecology of such complex systems, by combining records from Roman agriculturalists and palaeoenvironmental evidence of the past. We then zoom out, to look at today’s management practices in olive groves, thus drawing a parallel between Antiquity and today. Our work provides valuable insights into the correlation between certain organisation models, ecological strategies and adaptation capacity over the long term, clearly showing that human and nature dimensions are interconnected. Such entanglement may be a key element for ensuring these agroecosystems resilience. All elements that may contribute to the re-invention of sustainable forms of their management, for the present and the future.