This research examines a portion of the Italian alpine landscape in order to find a comprehension mode and a strategic proposal to safeguard this rural heritage. The area is located in Valtellina, in the municipality of Teglio (Sondrio, Italy), between 700 and 1200 m a.s.l. Typical characteristic of the local landscape conformation is fragmentation, which determines a rapidly changing chequerboard depending on the rotation of seasons and cultivation. The landscape alternates wooded and cultivated areas. Cultivations mainly concern rye, buckwheat, corn, barley, alpine wheat, chestnuts and small orchards and have a wide agrobiodiversity and especially a historical and cultural value. The cultivation of buckwheat, for example nustran arrived in the valley in the XVII century and Teglio is the place where it persists more. The genotypes present are in part already classified, in part under study. The vernine crop alternated to buckwheat is mainly rye, arrived in the valley since the XV century. The local varieties formed over time are a resource of genotypes adapted to high altitude agricultural environments, they have important nutraceutical properties and they are closely associated with the local culture. The aim was to verify the persistence of traditional crops in the area, together with the cultural value of the traditional rural system, in order to analyse the feasibility of a strategy for the preservation of biocultural diversity. The research has shown how, despite the dynamics of depopulation and abandonment of agricultural fields, there is still in the area a sufficient permanence of cultural practices and social uses that can be a solid starting point for a sustainable development of the territory that focuses on agricultural and cultural biodiversity.

Traditional agricultural practice and peculiar geographical features in the Mediterranean basin have not only moulded cultural and heritage values, but also created the conditions for the development of habitats to be protected. Therefore, Landscape proves a suitable concept both for the enhancement of cultural features and for nature conservation. The aim of this work is to apply the landscape approach to the Pantelleria National Park, providing the opportunity to reflect upon and discuss whether and how to encompass rural landscape planning and management within the broader context of natural values, offering a frame of reference for the zoning of the future Park Plan. Specifically, the research aims to define zoning categories, typical to protected areas planning, using criteria related to landscape features and patterns, environmental quality, traditional agriculture, architectural heritage. Established in 2016, the Pantelleria National Park is the most recent Italian National Park and the first one in Sicily. The Park covers 79% of the island, encompassing two sites of Community Importance as well as one Special Protection Area belonging to the Natura 2000 network. Pantelleria is a microcosm gathering a great variety of natural and human-made landscapes characterized by high levels of complexity embodying the antagonism of two protected ‘noble interests’: Nature and the environment on the one hand, Culture framed as traditional rural practices on the other. The main challenge of the new-founded National Park is to combine quality and values relating to the domain of Nature, which is expanding, with those expressed by Culture, represented by a wide array of historical rural values at risk due to ongoing abandonment of most remote areas.

In Italy, agricultural intensification and the abandonment of rural areas since the 1960s has led to a transformation of the traditional agricultural landscape, bringing with it a series of environmental and socio-economic issues and problems such as those linked to hydrogeological instability, a reduction in biocultural diversity and migration to urban centres, especially of the younger population. These phenomena have also led to a progressive loss of all the cultural and traditional practices related to these systems, thus contributing to a homogenization of the landscape structure due to abandonment. On the other hand, in the last years, we are witnessing a return to rural and traditional practices with the aim of recovering local cultures, especially those associated to agricultural practices, and to a more sustainable management of the territory. Vallecorsa, a municipality in central Italy, is one of the landscapes inscribed in the Italian National Register of Historical Rural Landscapes and it is still characterized by traditional agricultural practices that provide multiple benefits also in ecological terms, maintaining a specific level of biodiversity, interpreted as part of the biocultural diversity of the area. The aim of the present research is to analyse the structure of the traditional landscape of Vallecorsa and to determine its main characteristics, using landscape as the scale. Through the use of GIS software, by means of photo-interpretation and the use of DTM, the present study analyses the structure of land use, and in particular of terraced surfaces, and the associated data on area size, fragmentation, altitude and slope. The results take into account the diversity of land uses and mosaic patches, as well as terraced surfaces, and their distribution in the territory, relating them to the local biodiversity, in particular that of dry stone walls.