Today it is evident that there are many contrasting demands on our landscape(e.g. food security, more sustainable agriculture, higher income in ruralareas, etc.) as well as many land degradation problems.It has been proved that providing operational answers to these demands andproblems is extremely difficult.Here we aim to demonstrate that a spatial decision support system based ongeospatial cyberinfrastructure (GCI) can address all of the above, soproducing a smart system for supporting decision making for agriculture,forestry, and urban planning with respect to the landscape.In this paper, we discuss methods and results of a special kind of GCIarchitecture, one that is highly focused on land management and soilconservation. The system allows us to obtain dynamic, multidisciplinary,multiscale, and multifunctional answers to agriculture, forestry, and urbanplanning issues through the Web. The system has been applied to and testedin an area of about 20 000 ha in the south of Italy, within the framework ofa European LIFE+ project (SOILCONSWEB).The paper reports – as a case study – results from two differentapplications dealing with agriculture (olive growth tool) and environmentalprotection (soil capability to protect groundwater).Developed with the help of end users, the system is starting to be adoptedby local communities. The system indirectly explores a change of paradigmfor soil and landscape scientists. Indeed, the potential benefit is shown ofovercoming current disciplinary fragmentation over landscape issues byoffering – through a smart Web-based system – truly integrated geospatialknowledge that may be directly and freely used by any end user(href="http://www.landconsultingweb.eu"target="_blank">www.landconsultingweb.eu). This may help bridge the last very importantdivide between scientists working on the landscape and end users.
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