A smart monitoring to face the challenges in historic gardens: the EFFORT approach.

The artistic and predominant plant components of a historic garden provide several important services (e.g. recreational, water regulation, biodiversity conservation, pollution removal) and values (e.g. cultural, aesthetic, historic, economic) in urban areas. Managing historic gardens is a challenge, mostly because of the prevailing plant component and its fragile relationship with the artistic structure. Moreover, the current state of plant conservation in some historic gardens is often precarious. In fact, in the last decades, the natural aging process of the tree component has been threatened by biotic and abiotic stressors (often related to climatic extreme events associated with global warming), which are particularly serious in senescent individuals. Furthermore, the health status of the plants and some issues related to tree structural stability may likely harm artistic artefacts, buildings and -above all- may represent a threat for visitors’ safety, thus making the access to public gardens dangerous. In order to support conservation, restoration, and management of historic gardens, defining appropriate managing guidelines is of crucial interest. We present here a smart monitoring approach, which was developed within the EFFORT project (co-funded by Tuscany Region and Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Italy). The novel approach of this project combines smart technologies to analyse both plant and architectural features in two Italian historical gardens, namely those of the Medici Villa di Castello and Villa la Petraia (Florence). Here we will present the results of the monitoring activity, which started in March 2020 and was applied at the level of both the garden and the single plant, by using remote sensing (high resolution cameras, Sentinel2 images and LIDAR), image analysis techniques and ecophysiological sensors. The results, demonstrating to be effective in monitoring the vegetation and architectural features of the garden at high spatial and temporal scale, will be used to establish guidelines and measures to support the managers of historical gardens in a process of adaptation to the current and future environmental conditions. Finally, the assessment of effectiveness of the smart monitoring approach will leverage the possibility of its replicability in other historic gardens worldwide.