News

We have reached a key milestone of BioESSaNS, by compiling the first ever database of sacred natural sites in Italy. Benedetta Marchetto, Marco d'Agostino, Piero Zannini e Fabrizio Frascaroli, who have contributed to the creation of the database, have managed to identify and map no less than 2785 sites in all Italy. This figure certainly does not cover all of sacred natural sites in the Country. Indeed it is very likely that a significant number of sites, especially the smaller and more remote ones, have not been covered in this mapping effort, which for several reasons could not include local sources. Nonetheless, the figure is already quite impressive and emphasises the ancient and pervasive link between nature and ‘the sacred’ in rural and mountainous Italy. A database of this size will also constitute a most precious resource as a basis for large-scale spatial analyses in the continuation of the project.

When days turn bright and plants are in bloom, it is also the time for fieldwork campaigns. For us, it is the moment of starting the vegetation surveys relative to BioESSaNS. We will acquire new first-hand data, based on an innovative sampling design, so that we can have a fresh picture of the vegetation found around sacred natural sites in Italy.

With the aid of Geographic Information Systems and some statistics, we have identified 27 sample sites (yellow dots in the map) across the Country, which we deem to be representative of different landscapes and geographical areas. We will conduct vegetation surveys at each of those sites, based on the same sampling scheme. These surveys will enable us to compare the vegetation between the sacred sites and the broader landscape. The design we have conceived is ambitious, as it will likely force us to collect a pretty large amount of data. At the same time, it is also the outcome of much discussion and brainstorming among colleagues… If collected well, we expect that the data we are going to acquire will be able to tell us many stories about plants and people in the Country. But now it is time to go, and hopefully we will manage to sample all sites before the Summer heat will dry up the plants, putting an end to the fieldwork season.

We are well into Summer and the season is no longer favourable to the work of surveying the vegetation, if not at higher altitudes and latitudes. For this reason, we indeed kept last the sites in the northern part of Italy.
In the end, we have managed to sample 24 of the 27 sites at which we were aiming. Unfortunately, some setbacks such as sites that are hard to reach or having different characteristics than expected are not uncommon. It is an excellent result nonetheless and already gives us solid grounds on which to start some analyses during Winter… but of course, we will first need to identify all the few hundreds samples that we have collected over the last months!