Assessing the impact of terraces on soil erosion

Tuscany countryside (central Italy) is characterized by a hilly landscape that over the centuries, has been shaped by farmers in search of new arable land, leading them to realize terraces (Agnoletti et al., 2015). However, from the 1960s, the development of agricultural mechanization has led to an expansion of up and down the slope cultivated fields and to a progressive abandonment of terraced surfaces (Landi, 1989; Agnoletti et al., 2015, Napoli et al., 2016). Our study was focused on the “Alta Val di Pesa” in the Municipality of Radda in Chianti. The aims of this study were: 1) to evaluate the effectiveness of the land setting practices such as diversion ditch and stonewall terraces on reducing soil loss by water erosion in the vineyard and olive groves; 2) to compare erosion rates from fields with non-degraded (standing) and degraded (fully or partly collapsed) stonewall terraces.