AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE OVER-SIMPLIFICATION AND AGROBIODI VERSITY DETRIMENT: THE REHABILITATING ROLE OF AGROFORESTRY PRACTICES IN THE PO PLAIN DISTRICT

he agricultural systems capacity to sustain territorial, ecologica! and productive functions is currently significantly undermined, consequently to agricultural mechanization, rural landscape over-simplification affecting its underpinned support-regulating functions and services. The Po Pia in district brings striking evidence on such impacts, combined to the condensed urban ization and grey infrastructures impacts, restricting natural ecosystems, often degraded and dominateci by invasive alien species. To tace this, integrateci approaches are needed, working on multi-scale assessment and management strategies, enabling to rehabilitate the landscape ecologica! functioning, restoring its capacity to support higher agrobiodiversity levels. To this aim, our study intends to bring light on the role of farm-scale and loca I-scale landscape features management (agroforestry approach), by locally testing viable monitoring tools tor recognising and supporting farmers' contribution to agroecosystems' biodiversity. Landscape ecology analyses are led on 4 pilot farms (Western Po Plain) adopting agroforestry approaches to different degrees. An extended set of landscape structure indices (composition, shape, connectivity) is computed at farm-scale and local-scale, comparing agroforestry-based approaches to conventional management. Functional interpretations of structural traits refer to two non-specific taxa groups (sensitive and generalist behaviours). Wider scale qualitative analyses frame lower scale results. lndices comparison allowed us to: i. distinguish the most virtuous farm management model; ii. forecast the effects of landscape features design scenarios on connectivity values; iii. highlight the influence of local-scale landscape ecologica! conditions on farm-scale ecologica! processes; iv. detect indices sensitiveness to management options, their relative correlations patterns, allowing their preliminary screening (indices selection, suitable tor representing Po Pia in landscape peculiarities). Our assessment is conceived as a pilot tool tor: i. accounting and promoting virtuous management models, supporting agrobiodiversity values; ii. coherently driving agroforestry farm design and management strategies; iii. integrate the more commonly used field-scale agrobiodiversity assessment approaches (e.g floristic-vegetational, fauna I studies), framing them into a multi-scale perspective, enhancing their mutuai informative potential whilst optimising assessment efforts.