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The Impact
Assessment
Procedure (
IAP
)
SAGE10 at a glance...
The main target of the
SAGE10
Project was the
improvement of the applied today agricultural
practices in olive groves for the benefit of
agro-environment targeting at the same time the
maximization of yields by considering the available
resources to the growers.
The
STRATEGY
applied in SAGE10 was the creation
of a framework for the provision of targeted
advisory services to the grower with the
development of an innovative Impact Assessment
Procedure aimed at assessing environmental
footprint of olive cultivation. The Method IAP (as
defined in SAGE10) was designed to prioritize the
expected impacts derived from olive cultivation
taking into consideration the characteristics of
each individual olive grove (out of 600 ones), which
was included in the pilot application and testing
of IAP, in combination with the cultural practices
applied by the grower.
The main structural component of IAP was the Triplets which bring together the ‘aspects’ (elements
of agricultural activities e.g. crop protection, fertilization, waste management,) with the ‘impacts’
(e.g. pollution, toxicity, natural resources depletion etc.) in different ‘compartments’ ( water, soil, man,
biodiversity).
Every possible impact is correlated with a range of parameters which are related to either
grower’s agricultural activities and the practices followed, called parameters P (e.g. application of
the recommended on the label dose of pesticides, application of the recommended dose of fertilizers,
management ways of agricultural waste, spray remnantsmanagement, methods and time of irrigation
etc.) or to environment of an olive grove, called parameters E (distance of the parcel from a water
body, soil type, slope, distance of the grove from NATURA areas etc.).
The parameters were selected on the basis of predefined criteria. The magnitude of effect
of each parameter on an impact on one compartment varies. For this reason, parameters were
assigned with different weights in different triplets so as their contribution to different impacts to
be attributed. As an example it could be mentioned that, for the aspect fertilization, the parameter
‘soil cover by vegetation’ is quite important to delay runoff and leaching, thus preventing pollution
(impact) of surface or ground-water (environmental compartments), respectively. Hence in the
cases of the triplets ‘fertilisation-pollution–surface water’ and ‘fertilisation- pollution –ground
water’, it was given a weight of 4 in an 1-5 scale, where 5 denotes detrimental contribution of one
parameter to an expected impact. Its role however to prevent two other impacts, i.e. salinization
or acidification of soil is limited hence the weight given to the very same parameter in the triplet
‘fertilization-salinization-soil’ was 2. Each parameter was defined and used in IAP as absolute
value or value ranges/classes.
The 385 parameters used in IAP are related to...
Biodiversity
The total of the parameters in this field like the vicinity of the olive grove with natural or semi-natural
areas (m), the pruning time , the management of pruning residues included into the IAP method
reflect, in a systematic way, potential negative or positive effects on biodiversity in an olive grove.
The identification of the problems and the link to their causes is the key to solve them at the level of
olive grove, with targeted and specialized alternative measures that are proposed to each farmer.
Soil and Water
During the development of the IAPmethod, there were developed and assessed individual parameters
related with fertilization, irrigation and soil treatment such as frequency of application of fertilisers,
climate, soil and water chemical analysis, leaching risk, runoff risk, mechanical soil treatment,
electrical conductivity etc. The calculation of parameters and the definition of their classes were
based on the international literature and expert judgment, while for few of them there were developed
