Annie Latimer 1/22

 We visited lemon orchard terraces where we had a lovely lemon tasting and tour. The family that owned the orchard said that they have had to lean more on tourism in the past few years to be able to stay open. They were keeping the traditional agricultural practices alive while making it a tourist attraction. It takes a lot to be able to keep these terraces up and running. Natural hazards threaten their stability and integrity. In our discussions we talked about these natural hazards interact with crop cultivation (cost of production, distance to market, man power, product price, etc). Soil erosion can lead to landslides, which leads to terrace instability, effecting the time and effort it takes to get the product to and from its destination. Terraces also have an effect on the environment around them. Terraces make slopes unstable, fires uneven, modifies the hydro-geological equilibrium, and modifies vegetation patterns. These problems make it so the workers must mitigate erosion, have proper construction, and keep up with maintenance. Periodical maintenance is the best effort to help save the stability of the terrace.


We also had a chance to visit Pompeii. During our site visit and discussions we learned that Pompeii had a diverse economy with a full range of commerce and industry. This certainly was seen during our tour of Pompeii. I was shocked at how large it was and all of the different businesses that were there. The most memorable was their 'fast food' restaurants where hot soup or food would be in a terracotta pot, ready to serve. In our discussions we talked about how the smallest piece of evidence can open up an entirely new door full of knowledge. At Pompeii, archeologists deemed some places of maybe having that role because sometimes it was uncertain of what a place was. We have no ancient people from Pompeii here today to be able to tell us which place was which. So there are some things that we just can't learn about Pompeii.

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