Research gaps in understanding flood changes at the catchment scale caused by changes in forest management, agricultural practices, artificial drainage, and terracing are identified. Potential strategies in addressing these gaps are proposed, such as complex systems approaches to link processes across time scales, long‐term experiments on physical‐chemical‐biological process interactions, and a focus on connectivity and patterns across spatial scales. It is suggested that these strategies will stimulate new research that coherently addresses the issues across hydrology, soil and agricultural sciences, forest engineering, forest ecology, and geomorphology.

Traditional agroforestry systems have received increasing attention in recent decades for their multifunctional role and as a sustainable development model for rural areas. At the international level, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) programme in 2002 with the aim of identifying agricultural systems of global importance; preserving landscapes, agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge; applying the dynamic conservation principles while promoting sustainable development. The aim of the research is to carry out a review of the inscription dossiers of all the 59 sites already included in the GIAHS programme, in order to analyze the role of forests and agroforestry systems. Moreover, the main traditional management techniques have been identified and briefly described, as traditional forest-related knowledge is particularly important for sustainable forest management. Forests and agroforestry systems have been found to be important or crucial in about half of the sites. The main role assigned to forests and agroforestry systems in GIAHS proposals is related to the production of timber, fuelwood and by-products for the local communities according to sustainable and traditional management techniques. Among these, they also play important roles in hydrogeological protection, water regulation and biodiversity maintenance, representing examples both of human adaptation to different environments and of resilient systems that could help to face global challenges such as hydrogeological risk and climate change. The review of the GIAHS inscription dossiers also highlighted the lack of a uniform approach in dealing with forest issues, especially for what concern the description of management plans and the relation with protected areas or forest planning instruments.

During 25 October 2011, an extremely intense rainfall event occurred in Eastern Liguria and Northern Tuscany. Severe damages were registered in the Monterosso and Vernazza basins, located in the famous area of Cinque Terre, which have been affected by hundreds of landslides, mud flows, and erosions. The main feature of the Cinque Terre landscape is the presence of terraced cultivations on steep slopes facing the sea. The area represents a remarkable cultural landscape, is a National Park, and is included in the World Heritage List of the UNESCO. This work aims to analyze the effect of abandoned terraced land on hydrogeological risks and in landslide prevention, by comparing what happened in Cinque Terre to other experiences presented in scientific literature. The cessation of maintenance of dry stone terraces due to the crisis of traditional agriculture was identified as the main cause of failure during the heavy rainfall event. However, we found some contrasting and, in some cases, unexpected results in the literature regarding the effects of the vegetation that develops on abandoned terraces. This paper compares different results in order to better understand what the future of terraced landscapes is and which are the best management strategies for such complex and fragile territories. In particular, where they represent a cultural heritage and a resource for the rural economy.

Traditional oases represent unique forms of adaptation to extreme environmental conditions, developed through the centuries by local farmers to support their livelihood, combining different crops (date palms, fruit trees, vegetables and fodder) with livestock breeding. Despite their social, economic and cultural importance, these agroforestry systems are currently facing multiple socio-environmental threats. The aim of the paper is to investigate the variety of Ecosystem Services (ES) and the main threats related to traditional oases in Northern Africa through a systematic literature review. The search returned 257 relevant papers published from 2005 to March 2022, mostly focusing on Tunisian oases (37%), followed by Algerian (23%), Moroccan (19%), Egyptian (17%), and Libyan (4%). Provisioning Services, in particular Genetic diversity, agrobiodiversity and biodiversity, are the most cited ES (36% of the papers) followed by Cultural Services, mainly represented by Traditional knowledge systems, cultural heritage and sense of place (17%), while Regulating Services are less considered. Results highlighted that water related issues (desertification, drought, salinization or overexploitation) represent the main threat, followed by decrease of agrobiodiversity, primarily due to the spread of monocultures of commercial date varieties, and by social transformations (depopulation, traditional knowledge and cultural heritage loss). The literature review proved that traditional oases are still crucial for the livelihood of local communities since they still provide many ES. Local experiences related to sustainable development and tourism, or innovative solutions to valorize local products and byproducts, could be important for replication in other traditional oases to contribute to the wellbeing of local communities and to the preservation of these agroecosystems.

The European continent still has a rich heritage of rural landscapes built up over thousands of years. The UNESCO-sCBD Florence Declaration of 2014, describes it as being predominantly a biocultural landscape, as it assimilates economic, social, cultural, and environmental processes in time and space. This definition also includes the forests, which have been affected by several centuries of human action and are also a part of the European cultural heritage. However, an approach to forest landscapes often employing the same tools used for nature conservation has led to a definition of management tools mostly based on ecological characteristics. The origin of forests and woodlands is rarely interpreted as the result of human activities and protected and managed accordingly. The three pillars on which Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) in Europe are based are ecological values, economic values, and sociocultural values. However, no political resolutions requiring countries to develop strategies and carry out actions for the preservation of cultural forests have been developed so far. The fact that cultural values currently play a limited role in SFM indicates the scant consideration given to the role of culture and history, as well as the lack of a comprehensive landscape approach. Failure to effectively and coherently address culture and history may very well be an emerging weakness that needs to be reconciled, especially now that the landscape approach is proposed on a global scale as a new perspective for sustainable development. One of the consequences of this failure has been the widespread application of an idea of ‘naturalness’ to places that are not natural, threatening the conservation of the cultural identity of local populations and the historical values of forests, and favoring processes of abandonment and renaturalization. The present paper advocates the practical implementation of existing tools for protecting cultural forest landscapes, such as the MCPFE Guidelines for Social and Cultural Values in SFM and the UNESCO-sCBD Florence Declaration.