Obstacle avoidance is a key aspect for any autonomous vehicles, and their usage in agriculture must overcome additional challenges such as handling interactions with agricultural workers and other tractors in order to avoid severe accidents. The simultaneous presence of autonomous vehicles and workers on foot definitely calls for safer designs, vehicle management systems and major developments in personal protective equipment (PPE). To cope with these present and future challenges, the “SMARTGRID” project described in this paper deploys an integrated wireless safety network infrastructure based on the integration of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices and passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags designed to identify obstacles, workers, nearby vehicles and check if the right PPE is in use. With the aim of detecting workers at risk by scanning for passive RFID-integrated into PPE in danger areas, transmitting alerts to workers who wear them, tracking of near-misses and activating emergency stops, a deep analysis of the safety requirements of the obstacle detection system is shown in this study. Test programs have also been carried out on an experimental farm with detection ranging from 8 to 12 meters, proving that the system might represent a good solution for collision avoidance between autonomous vehicles and workers on foot.

Although peri-urban landscapes in Southern Europe still preserve a relatively high level of biodiversity in relict natural places, urban expansion is progressively consuming agricultural land and, in some cases, forest cover. This phenomenon has (direct and indirect) environmental implications, both positive and negative. The present study contributes to clarifying the intrinsic nexus between long-term urban expansion and forest dynamics in a representative Mediterranean city based on diachronic land-use maps. We discuss some counterintuitive results of urbanization as far as forest expansion, wildfire risk, and biodiversity conservation are concerned. Forest dynamics were investigated at two time intervals (1936–1974 and 1974–2018) representing distinctive socioeconomic contexts in the Rome metropolitan area in Central Italy. Additionally, the spatial relationship between forest cover and urban growth was evaluated using settlement density as a target variable. All over the study area, forest cover grew moderately over time (from 18.3% to 19.9% in the total landscape), and decreased along the urban gradient (i.e., with settlement density) more rapidly in 2018 than in 1936. The diversification of forest types (Shannon H index) was higher in areas with medium-density settlements, indicating a tendency towards more heterogeneous and mixed structures in rural and peri-urban woods that undergo rising human pressure. The dominance of a given forest type (Simpson’s D index) was higher at high settlement density areas. Evenness (Pielou’s J index) was the highest at low settlement density areas. The long-term assessment of land-use dynamics in metropolitan fringes enriched with a spatially explicit analysis of forest types may inform regional planning and environmental conservation, which could delineate appropriate strategies for sustainable land management in Southern European cities.

Tillage and harvesting operations of perennial forage crops have problems with soil compaction. The effects of this phenomenon are soil deterioration with reduced crop performance and yield. This study aims to assess soil disturbance by measuring the level of compaction caused by the harvesting operations of Phalaris arundinacea L. P. arundinacea is a species that lends itself to biomass production and phytoremediation of contaminated soils; it adapts to difficult soil conditions, outperforming other species in terms of ease of planting, cost, maturity time, yield, and contamination levels. The crop was sown in three plots of the experimental teaching farm of the University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy. Following a detailed analysis of the chemical–physical characteristics of the soil, minimum tillage was chosen in order to concentrate on harvesting operations, which were carried out with a disc mower coupled to a tractor. This was followed by penetration resistance and soil moisture measurements to verify the incidence of the operations and the effect of the type of crop on compaction. On the study site, measurements were taken at points that the wheels of the tractor had gone over and at points that they had not. The soil analysis results indicate different chemical–physical characteristics between the two areas, the texture being frankly sandy to clayey. Penetration resistance measurements indicated differences for the first 20 cm between the part that was covered by the tractor’s tyres and the part that was left touched but also between the three plots. Moisture influenced penetration resistance. This study provides an evaluation of the first data obtained from a project that will last four years and which will explore the dynamics between soil, cultivation, and harvesting operations, giving a fundamental basis for further investigation of further harvesting operations and soil characteristics, which are crucial for planning and managing crops and reducing impacts on the soil in order to preserve it.

Available data indicates 2.8 million potentially contaminated sites, just across the EU-28. While 650,000 sites have been registered, only 1 in 10 have so far been remediated[1]. The management cost of European contaminated sites is estimated at €6 billion annually[2]. The main types of contaminants are potentially toxic elements (including heavy metals). Similarly, a 2014 Government study in China found 16.1% of all soil and 19.4% of arable land showed contamination, with Cd, Ni and As being the main pollutants[3]. Meanwhile, the global challenge of feeding growing populations while still reducing greenhouse gas emissions leaves less agricultural for dedicated bioenergy crops[4]. Therefore, there is a pressing need to successfully combine nature-based decontamination through phytoremediation with bioenergy production. Given the wide variety of non-agricultural marginal lands[5], species selection must combine significant biomass production with acceptable levels of contamination for subsequent use or energy conversion. Whereas specialist hyperaccumulator plants may achieve higher levels of contaminants and greater bioconcentration and translocation factors, their inherently lower productivity means that biomass, energy yield and mass of contaminants removed per unit area will be relatively small. In contrast, high yielding, low contaminant uptake characteristics, such as for conventional energy crop species, could result in greater energy production, economic viability and biomass utilisation potential. Here we report on field scale trials to implement this strategy, part of the CERESiS (ContaminatEd land Remediation through Energy crops for Soil improvement to liquid biofuels Strategies) H2020 Project (GA 101006717). We have evaluated the performance of Phalaris, Miscanthus, Saccharum and Pennisetum species for combined phyto-remediation and phyto-management of contaminated land during energy crop production in Brazil and Europe. Reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea) is a native perennial rhizomatous C3 species suitable for non-agricultural or marginal lands and climatic zones such as Scotland (where Miscanthus x giganteous cannot grow). Our phytoremediation trials using Phalaris in Italy and Ukraine are the first we are aware of. In the UK the CERESiS project has utilised field trials originally established during the BioReGen (Biomass, Remediation, re-Generation: Reusing Brownfield Sites for renewable energy crops) EU Life demonstration Project (LIFE05 ENV/UK/000128) in 2007. These allowed direct comparison of the actual contaminant removal rates of three crop species: Although the biomass of Miscanthus and short-rotation coppice Salix contained higher concentrations of certain elements, Phalaris far out-performed these in terms of biomass, ease and economy of production[6]. Surprisingly, despite lower contaminant concentrations in Phalaris, such was the increased biomass that the total mass removed was still greater than for Miscanthus or Salix. This suggests that low-uptake phyto-excluding plants which can tolerate contaminated soils and grow productively may still represent the best and most economically viable option for clean-up of contaminated sites. Meanwhile this nature-based solution can simultaneously deliver a variety of wider societal and environmental benefits, such as greening-up derelict land or the enhanced storage of carbon in soils[7]. [1] Pérez & Eugenio (2018). [2] Panagos et al. (2013). [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-27076645 [4] Searchinger et al. (2018). [5] Mellor et al. (2021). [6] Lord (2015). [7] Lord & Sakrabani (2019).