*Emanuele Visconti and Maria Consolata Visconti & C. s.a.s. Agricultural Company
MAP OF RIVER DYNAMICS
Scale 1 : 15 000
Legend: (orange) floodplain lands owned by the Company, (blue) Free waters and non vegetable pebble riverbeds
Nature
The usage of the farm land is 60% agricultural. The remaining part (about 400 hectares) is constituted by natural habitats. These habitats are composed of riparian woods (white willow woods, black alder ditches, black poplar forests), prairies, shrubs, river canals, resurgences, springs, fountains and gravel beds.
The Piedmontese part (80% of the surface area) falls entirely within the Regional System of Protected Areas of the Po River Belt and in particular within the Po and Orba River Parks.
The plots of lands are included in strips A (mainly) and B of the River Belt Excerpt Plan. The Piedmont and Lombardy areas (within which falls the Provincial Reserve of the Garzaia del Bosco Basso) are SCI and SPA areas. 82% of the farm is located within the Po floodplain, while the remaining 18% is situated beyond the main embankments.
With the conversion of the agricultural crops to tree farm installations carried out by the Visconti farm, the aim is the aesthetic improvement of the landscape, the rewilding of the environment and the seeking of forms of cultivation that are less susceptible to periodic flooding and to the erosive phenomena at the expense of the soil that these involve.
In a highly anthropized agricultural context, waterways (main canals of rivers and oxbow lakes), with its neighbouring tree and shrub vegetation constitute a fundamental element of biodiversity and serve as sites of refuge, feeding and reproduction for resident and migratory fauna.
The most significant faunal component is the avifauna with aquatic and limicolous birds (the rare red herons and stilt herons, among others, are at home or passing through the farm) and birds of prey (such as the common owl and the marsh harrier).
Within the floodplain area, which affects both banks of the Po, the morphology of the land is locally uneven due to the presence of oxbows and canals. In the past, the number of canals and oxbows was higher, but the agricultural reclamation works, together with the progressive contribution of materials by the river, have led to a local lowering of the water table, witnessed both by the progressive drying up of the oxbows and by the evolution of the natural vegetation. The land is subject to submersion with variable frequencies depending on the distance from the active riverbed and the altitude from it.
The prevalent uses are agricultural. However, the floodplain is still colonized by natural plant coenose. Depending on the type of river deposits and on the altitude of the land in relation to the average level of the water table, even in a short space, very different environments and vegetation associations follow one another (from hygrophilous dill to arid grassland of pebbly gravel) which give the area a particular naturalistic value and biodiversity.
Fluvial Dynamics
Given its location, the company has always had a close and "special" relationship with the Po River. On one hand, the river acts by its own as a disturbing or destroying element, with the strongest floods that damage the arable land, poplar groves and eradicate the arboreal vegetation interrupting the evolutionary cycle of the forest coenose, on the other hand, in its less violent manifestations, it brings fertile silty materials and contributes to the diffusion of seeds and cuttings.
Unfortunately, the global climate crisis has led to a significant increase in exceptional events over the last twenty years. Since 2000, the year of the catastrophic flood, there have been at least 10 significant events that have caused damage to crops, changed the course of the river and removed various owned farm lands.
