A NATIONAL PEDOCLIMATIC CHARACTERIZATION OF CROPPING SCHEMES BASED ON FADN ITALIAN DATA

Agriculture is the human activity that uses and transforms most of the Earth's surface. The intensification of farming practices and the reduction of species grown occurred in the past decades is compromising sustainability in all of its meanings. In this regard, it is crucial to scale up the agronomic research from the plot/farm level to the landscape level (Benoit, Rizzo et al., 2012). This challenge is taking benefits from the recent advances in remote sensing that are achieving increasingly detailed crop maps. However, the effects of farming on the environment may take several years to be detectable, so research is needed to analyse the temporal evolution of crop patterns. Methods to map crop sequences can significantly improve the spatially explicit understanding of the interactions between farming practices and natural resources. Another contribution to understanding could come from analysing data collected for different purposes, but rich of information, as the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) a source that could provide relevant insights on the farm management of yearly crop choices