Alberto Scotti

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Senior Freshwater Consultant at Apem Ltd.

1. In the European Alps, due to the current changes in land use driven by different social and economic factors, grasslands and pastures are being increasingly replaced by forests. Whereas many studies have focused on the impacts of urbani-sation and intensive agricultural activities, no study has evaluated the effects of changes among types of nat...

The increasing incentives stemming from many international initiatives that target sustainable energy production have led to the global success of small hydropower plants. However, there is a growing debate about the actual environmental impact these structures have on riverine ecosystems, to the extent that some researchers argue that they could h...

Humans impact terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems, yet many broad-scale studies have found no systematic, negative biodiversity changes (for example, decreasing abundance or taxon richness). Here we show that mixed biodiversity responses may arise because community metrics show variable responses to anthropogenic impacts across broad spat...

Context Global change, including land-use change and habitat degradation, has led to a decline in biodiversity, more so in freshwater than in terrestrial ecosystems. However, the research on freshwaters lags behind terrestrial and marine studies, highlighting the need for innovative approaches to comprehend freshwater biodiversity. Objectives We i...

While application of salt for de-icing purposes has been extensively studied in urban areas of North America, little attention has been paid to it in Europe, particularly in mountain areas. Here, after assessment of baseline salinity, and through applying different approaches (i.e., univariate statistical techniques, Multivariate Regression Trees,...

Motivation Here, we make available a second version of the BioTIME database, which compiles records of abundance estimates for species in sample events of ecological assemblages through time. The updated version expands version 1.0 of the database by doubling the number of studies and includes substantial additional curation to the taxonomic accura...

Mountain ecosystems play an important role globally as centers of biodiversity and in providing ecosystem services to lowland populations, but are influenced by multiple global change drivers such as climate change, nitrogen deposition, or altered disturbance regimes. As global change is accelerating and the consequences for humans and nature are i...

Under climate change, glacier recession and the loss of cold habitats are major threats to aquatic biodiversity. In mountain areas, streams originating from rock glaciers, called “icy seeps”, may represent climate refugia for cold-adapted organisms, given the major persistence of cold waters from these landforms even in unfavourable climates. Durin...

Freshwater macroinvertebrates are a diverse group and play key ecological roles, including accelerating nutrient cycling, filtering water, controlling primary producers, and providing food for predators. Their differences in tolerances and short generation times manifest in rapid community responses to change. Macroinvertebrate community compositio...

Permanent ponds are valuable freshwater systems and biodiversity hotspots. They provide diverse ecosystem services (ES), including water quality improvement and supply, food provisioning and biodiversity support. Aquatic subsidies provide a high nutritional quality, energy density and nutrient concentration. Among those, emerging insects are rich i...

Habitat diversity plays a crucial role in shaping the structure and distribution of benthic macroinvertebrate communities. However, few studies have investigated the concurrent effects of such drivers operating at different spatial scales in mountain streams. Here, we assessed which environmental factors at different spatial scales, related to stre...

Ditches could represent a tool for biodiversity enhancement and preservation in agricultural environments, also in Alpine regions. Macroinvertebrates and environmental factors describing water quality, substrate composition, hydrology, and geomorphology were collected in 10 ditches located in the Adige Valley, within the Biodiversity Monitoring pro...

Behovet for CO 2-neutral energi har skabt en voldsom vaekst i antallet af vandkraftvaerker på verdensplan. Det har rejst bekymring for konsekvenserne for biodiversiteten og økologien i de vandløb, hvor vaerkerne anlaegges. Vi har fulgt en gletsjerfødt alpebaek før og efter etableringen af et lille vandkraftvaerk og beretter om ingen målbare effekte...

Owing to a long history of anthropogenic pressures, freshwater ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to biodiversity loss¹. Mitigation measures, including wastewater treatment and hydromorphological restoration, have aimed to improve environmental quality and foster the recovery of freshwater biodiversity². Here, using 1,816 time series of fresh...

Am Saldurbach, einem im Oberlauf fischfreien Wildbach mit vergletschertem Einzugsgebiet in den italienischen Alpen, wurde 2015 eine Kleinwasserkraftanlage in Betrieb genommen. In einem Forschungsprojekt wurden die Auswirkungen des Kraftwerks (KW) Saldur auf aquatische Makroinvertebraten in der Restwasserstrecke untersucht. Diese Organismen werden a...

On initiative of the government of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano-Südtirol (Province Bolzano-Südtirol, Region Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy) a biodiversity monitoring program was established, starting with sampling on terrestrial sites in 2019 and on running water sites in 2021. The Biodiversity Monitoring South Tyrol (BMS in short) is a long-term...

Despite very limited in their extension - about 1% of the total surface of our planet – freshwater habitats greatly contribute to the biodiversity of Earth, since 10% of the known species and 33% of the vertebrates inhabit freshwaters. However, continuous monitoring of habitats and biodiversity – not only aquatic – is considered as a complex task d...

Currently, across the entire European river network, there are an estimated 0.74 barriers per kilometer of river length, with hydropower production being the main cause of riverine habitat fragmentation. On the one hand, policy actions have been proposed by different institutions to limit this impact. On the other hand, the compelling need to produ...

Permanent ponds represent important habitats for aquatic biodiversity and provide vital ecosystem services as key elements for blue landscape connectivity. Although mostly neglected in management programmes, protection schemes and biodiversity studies in general, ponds constitute habitats with high α- and spatial β-diversity, providing unique habit...

Ponds, whilst being mostly neglected in management and protection plans, can constitute habitats with high α- and β-diversity, including many rare and endemic species. In heterogeneous landscapes, ponds can also contribute to habitat connectivity and enhance γ-diversity whilst delivering many ecosystem services. Semi-aquatic insects are one of the...

Whilst being small and shallow, permanent ponds provide valuable habitats for a multitude of organisms as well as provide habitats for animals like aquatic insects and others, including many rare species. These ponds, which were often neglected in limnological studies, were the core of our joint project, the 3rd freshwater project - EUROPONDS in or...

Fish are some of the most threatened vertebrates in the world due to their often-sensitive response to environmental changes. Major land-use changes in the European Alps have direct and indirect impacts on fish communities, and these impacts are expected to increase in the future. Therefore, the identification of factors that are associated with th...

Within the EUROPONDS project we looked into the contribution of aquatic invertebrates to terrestrial ecosystems, which are globally declining, in various countries all over Europe. Our study encompassed a restored quarry in Alpedrete, Madrid, Spain, a landscape destined for livestock activities. We hypothesized that the emergence during autumn and...

High biodiversity is a prerequisite for the integrity, stability, and functioning of global aquatic ecosystems, but it is currently subject to anthropogenic threats. Small freshwater bodies with high habitat diversity are essential to sustain regional biodiversity, but species inventory and biodiversity are largely overlooked, especially in mountai...

The present dataset contains information about aquatic macroinvertebrates and environmental variables collected before and after the implementation of a small “run-of-river” hydropower plant on the Saldur stream, a glacier-fed stream located in the Italian Central-Eastern Alps. Between 2015 and 2019, with two sampling events per year, we collected...

Stream benthic macroinvertebrates have been collected for a period of 5 consecutive years, twice a year (2015-2019, in April/May and in September/October), along a longitudinal transect of the Saldur stream, a near pristine glacier-fed stream located in South Tyrol, Italy (46°N, 10° E), part of the International Long Term Ecological Research (ILTER...

This poster was a contribution by Juan Rubio-Ríos and Encarnación Fenoy from EUROPONDS project to the online Symposium about "Researches in Experimental Sciences" ("IX Simposio de Investigación en Ciencias Experimentales") from University of Almería in Spain.

Freshwater Biology Volume 65, Number 3, March 2020 The cover image is based on the Original Article Effects of land cover type on community structure and functional traits of alpine stream benthic macroinvertebrates by Alberto Scotti et al., https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.13448. Photo credit: Alberto Scotti.

Stream benthic macroinvertebrates have been collected at 14 sites in South Tyrol, on three different sampling occasions (May, July, September), year 2017. Considering the entire hydrological network of South Tyrol, sampling sites were selected according to the following requirements: 1) each sampling site had a homogeneous land cover type at reach...

Aquatic macroinvertebrates are widely used as bioindicators for water quality assessments involving different kinds of disruptive factors, such as hydrological regime variations or pollutant spills. Recently, they demonstrated to be effective in monitoring effects of climate change in alpine stream and rivers. Indeed, since the distribution of macr...

Stream benthic macroinvertebrates have been collected for a period of 6 consecutive years (2010-2015, from April to September, during the glacial melting) along a longitudinal transect of the Saldur stream, a near pristine glacier-fed stream located in South Tyrol, Italy (46°N, 10° E), part of the International Long Term Ecological Research (ILTER)...

The biodiversity of glacier-fed streams is particularly threatened by climate change, emphasising the need of monitoring these sentinel systems. The glacier-fed Saldur stream is an International Long Term Ecological Research (ILTER) site in the Italian Central Eastern Alps. Here, we sampled benthic macroinvertebrates and measured environmental vari...

Mountain ecosystems are sensitive and reliable indicators of climate change. Long-term studies may be extremely useful in assessing the responses of high-elevation ecosystems to climate change and other anthropogenic drivers from a broad ecological perspective. Mountain research sites within the LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research) network are repr...

Amongst other ecosystems threatened by climate change effects, living conditions in alpine streams in glaciated basins experience considerable changes as glaciers retreat, leading to changing structures of invertebrate populations inhabiting the riverbed. Community structures are monitored in Matsch Valley since 2014, but the species pool and popul...