INVENTORY OF TREE HEDGEROWS IN AN ITALIAN AGROFORESTRY LANDSCAPE BY REMOTE SENSING AND GIS-BASED METHODS

Agroforestry denotes land use systems combining trees with agricultural crops and/or livestock. The woody component, consisting of scattered or linear trees, can be located either inside the field or along the field boundaries as tree hedgerows. Such land use approach aims to optimize both ecological interactions and economical revenue and offers a number of ecosystem services, environmental benefits, occurring over a range of spatial and temporal scales. The resulting complexity of the landscape patterns can be detected combining Remote Sensing, GIS spatial analysis and field surveying in order to understand the interactions between woody and crop components, and for assessing, mapping and quantifying the socio-economic values of the agroforestry systems services. In this study, we aimed to map and estimate the extent of Tree Hedge Rows (THR) in an Italian agroforestry landscape and to assess the influence of THRs on the yield of crops at the plot-farm scale.