Aldo Marchetto

Italian National Research Council | CNR · Institute of Ecosystem Study ISE

We report a georeferenced dataset of a biological survey carried out in lakes and reservoirs in Piedmont and Sardinia regions (Italy), that includes fish fauna, macroinvertebrates, macrophytes, and phytoplankton. This survey was carried out to test the standardised protocols adopted with the National Decree 260/210 by the Italian Ministry of the En...

We publish a dataset on planktonic and benthic diatom occurrence in Lake Maggiore, the second Italian lake for depth and surface. Despite their extensive use in water quality biomonitoring, and their relevance among phytoplankton groups, research on benthic diatoms in Lake Maggiore are scarce. Diatoms have been collected from surface sediments, lit...

The effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on deposition and surface water chemistry were investigated in an area south of the Alps. Long-term data provided by the monitoring networks revealed that the deposition of sulfur and nitrogen compounds in this area has stabilized since around 2010; in 2020, however, both concentrations and deposition were signi...

The impact of climate change on stratification and mixing patterns has important effects on nutrient availability and plankton dynamics in deep lakes. We demonstrate this in a long-term study of Lake Maggiore, a deep oligomictic lake located in the subalpine lake district in Northern Italy. Studies on physical, chemical and biological features of t...

Atmospheric nitrogen and sulfur deposition is an important effect of atmospheric pollution and may affect forest ecosystems positively, for example enhancing tree growth, or negatively, for example causing acidification, eutrophication, cation depletion in soil or nutritional imbalances in trees. To assess and design measures to reduce the negative...

We publish a data set of environmental and biological data collected in 2000 during the ice-free period in high mountain lakes located above the local timberline in the Alps, in Italy, Switzerland and Austria. Environmental data include coordinates, geographical attributes and detailed information on vegetation, bedrock and land use in lake catchme...

Jargon is the specialised vocabulary of any science: it allows the creation of new terms to define concepts and it removes ambiguity from scientific communication. Yet, it may also hinder understanding for a broader audience. Given that the Journal of Limnology has jargon in its title, we here investigate the impact of the term ‘limnology’ on the w...

Within the activities for the implementation of the NEC Directive, aimed to the reduction of atmospheric pollutant emission, 8 high altitude alpine lakes in the N-W Italian Alps have been selected for monitoring . In this poster, the sampling campaigns, the adopted monitoring protocols and the dataset developed are described, as well as some prelim...

Lake tributaries collect contaminants from the watershed, which may accumulate in lake sediments over time and may be removed through the outlets. DDx, PCB, PAH, PBDE, and trace element (Hg, As, Cd, Ni, Cu, Pb) contamination was analyzed over 2001–2018 period in sediments of the 5 main tributaries and of the outlet of Lake Maggiore (Northern Italy)...

Global change transforms processes regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in lakes, yet our understanding of the broad scale responses of lake CO2 to global and local human perturbation across heterogeneous landscapes and multidecadal time scales is limited. We examined decadal scale variability in the carbon isotope (δ¹³C) composition of s...

Regime shifts are major reorganization of ecological processes, creating new sets of mechanisms that drive the new ecological regime. Such rearrangements can affect how and how much the system responds to pressures other than those that created the shift (interactive carryover). Lake Geneva still exhibits high levels of productivity despite reducti...

Criterion 2 considers and quantifies the exposure, risk, and impact on forest health posed by biotic and abiotic stressors. Environmental conditions, such as air and soil quality, influence the health and vitality of forest ecosystem and, subsequently, the provision of forest products and services. Appropriate management practices can improve the c...

Climate warming affects lake ecosystems both through its direct effect on the phenology of species and through the alteration of the physical and chemical environments, which in turn affect community composition. In deep lakes, stratification enhancement and mixing reduction have already been observed, leading to hypolimnetic anoxia and to the rise...

Originally described from a sample collected in the Pamir Mountains at the end of the nineteenth century, Cyclotella lacunarum Hustedt is a centric diatom species that is not-well defined and seldom reported in the scientific literature. Our investigations revealed that the type locality of this taxon, now referred to as Lindavia lacunarum (Hustedt...

Changing environmental conditions may substantially interact with site quality and forest stand characteristics, and impact forest growth and carbon sequestration. Understanding the impact of the various drivers of forest growth is therefore critical to predict how forest ecosystems can respond to climate change. We conducted a continental-scale an...

Considering the fragility of the Mediterranean environment, there is an increasing need to improve the knowledge of this forest environment. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of air pollution on the forest ecosystem’s condition by analyzing tree vitality. The study area was chosen to represent the most important and the most common s...

High mountain lakes are considered sensitive indicators of the effects of natural and anthropogenic drivers, including atmospheric deposition and climate change. In this study, we assess long-term trends in the chemistry of a group of high altitude lakes in the Western Alps, Italy, lying in bedrock with a relevant presence of basic, soluble rocks....

High mountain lakes (HML) provide essential ecosystem services, have tremendous conservation and aesthetic value, and are good model ecosystems to study the ecological consequences of global change. Multi-year (2008–2017) chemical data from 25 HML from the Gran Paradiso National Park (Western Italian Alps) were used to address two specific objectiv...

Acidification is a major soil-forming process, and concerns about acidifying anthropogenic atmospheric de-position make it a significant environmental issue. In the long term, the depletion of exchangeable base cations (BCEs) is the main process underpinning soil acidification. In south-central Italy, acidic soils are not rare and are often located...

Across the 28 EU member states there were nearly half a million premature deaths in 2015 as a result of exposure to PM 2.5 , O 3 and NO 2. To set the target for air quality levels and avoid negative impacts for human and ecosystems health, the National Emission Ceilings Directive (NECD, 2016/2284/EU) sets objectives for emission reduction for SO 2...

One-dimensional coupled ecological-hydrodynamic numerical models of lakes require extensive calibration of their chemical and biological parameters. Application of these models to future projections relies on the time invariance of the calibrated model parameters and of the adopted schematisation. This is mere speculation for real ecosystems, so th...

DDx, PCBs, PBDEs, Hg, and As contamination in sediments and aquatic organisms of different trophic levels (zooplankton, mussel, fish) were analyzed in Lake Maggiore and Lake Lugano, two large deep perialpine lakes. In the period 2001–2015, we analyzed the spatial and temporal trends of the considered pollutants to detect potential contamination sou...

The Water Framework Directive asks to all Member States of the European Union to classify the ecological quality of significant waterbodies on the basis of the biological communities they host. One of the biological communities that must be used for the ecological quality assessment is the periphytic community, mainly composed by diatoms. In Italy,...

The international Long-Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER) encompasses hundreds of long-term research/monitoring sites located in a wide array of ecosystems that can help us understand environmental change across the globe. We evaluated long-term trends (1990–2015) for bulk deposition, throughfall and runoff water chemistry and fluxes, and cli...

Hysteresis linked to alternative stable states may explain delays in water quality recovery despite reduced nutrient loadings in shallow lakes. Because deep lakes are assumed to be less prone to critical transitions, similar delays are attributed to the confounding effects of additional environmental disturbances, such as climate warming. Herein, w...

Marchetto A. & Cantonati M. 2017. Nascita e sviluppi della limnologia alpina. Atti Meeting L’acqua nelle terre alte: un percorso di ricerca attraverso il sistema alpino: 11-13. Verbania Pallanza - CNR ISE, December 4th 2015. CNR Edizioni. ISBN 978 88 8080 263 1 _________________________________________________________ Brief history of the origins a...

The intercomparison discussed in this report is the seventh exercise of an activity started in 1989, connecting laboratories participating in different projects (Environmental studies in the Mediterranean Basin, Acidification of Mountain lakes: paleolimnology and ecology, Limnological studies of Lake Leman). The number of participating laboratories...

Population dynamics is a field rich in theory and poor in long-term observational data. Finding sources of long-term data is critical as ecosystems around the globe continue to change in ways that current theories and models have failed to predict. Here we show how long-term ecological data can improve our understanding about palaeo-population chan...

The relative role of propagule pressure, abiotic and biotic variables as determinants of alien species occurrence differs among studies. This limits the synthesis of emergent patterns in invasion ecology and generalisations for conservation actions. In order to produce a broad and general assessment of the invasion pattern in aquatic habitats we he...

The report includes and examines the list of taxonomists from IAMC (Institute for Coastal Marine Environment), IGG (Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources), ISE (Institute of Ecosystem Study), and ISMAR (Institute of Marine Sciences), who responded to the Taxonomy Census 2016, their scientific publications and the number of taxa described new...

We present a data set on the biodiversity of Italian freshwaters, including lakeshores and riverbanks of natural (N=379: springs, streams and lakes) and artificial (N=11: fountains) sites. The data set belongs partly to the Italian Long Term Ecological Research network (LTER-Italy) and partly to LifeWatch, the European e-Science infrastructure for...

The relative role of propagule pressure, abiotic and biotic variables as determinants of non-native species occurrence differs among studies, hindering the synthesis of emergent patterns in invasion ecology and preventing generalisation for conservation actions. In order to produce a broad and general assessment of the occurrence of alien species i...

In the last decades, in Europe a large effort was carried out to reduce sulphur and nitrogen emission in the atmosphere, in order to improve air quality and reduce the acidity of atmospheric deposition and the amount of nitrogen compounds it carries to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. This resulted in a sharp decrease in the deposition of sulpha...

Lake Orta, northern Italy, has suffered from severe copper pollution and human-induced acidification between the 1920s and the 1990s because of discharges from a rayon factory and electroplating industries located in its water basin. Following liming operations in the late 1990s, the chemical quality of the water column has been restored and signs...

Although the Water Framework Directive specifies that macrophytes and phytobenthos should be used for the ecological assessment of lakes and rivers, practice varies widely throughout the EU. Most countries have separate methods for macrophytes and phytobenthos in rivers; however, the situation is very different for lakes. Here, 16 countries do not...

Varved lake sediments provide opportunities for high-resolution paleolimnological investigations that may extend monitoring surveys in order to target priority management actions under climate warming. This paper provides the synthesis of an international research program relying on >150 years-long, varved records for three managed perialpine lakes...

Varved lake sediments provide opportunities for high-resolution paleolimnological investigations that may extend monitoring surveys in order to target priority management actions under climate warming. This paper provides the synthesis of an international research program relying on >150 years-long, varved records for three managed perialpine lakes...

Key messageExceedance of critical limits in soil solution samples was more frequent in intensively monitored forest plots across Europe with critical loads for acidity and eutrophication exceeded compared to other plots from the same network. Elevated inorganic nitrogen concentrations in soil solution tended to be related to less favourable nutriti...

Key messageAtmospheric deposition of nitrogen compounds and soil and foliar variables related to N deposition resulted important factors accounting for the variability of defoliation in European forest plots.ContextNitrogen (N) deposition has increased in the northern hemisphere because of anthropogenic-related emission of N compounds. Increased N...

In efforts to understand the natural variability of the Earth climate system and the potential for future climate and environmental (e.g., biodiversity) changes, palaeodata play a key role by extending the baseline of environmental and climatic observations. Lake sediments, and particularly sediment archives of volcanic lakes, help to decipher natu...

One of the key actions identified by the Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC) is to develop ecological assessment tools and carry out a European intercalibration (IC) exercise. The aim of the Intercalibration is to ensure that the values assigned by each Member State to the good ecological class boundaries are consistent with the Directive’s...

Different methods for estimating the total phosphorus (TP) reference conditions of lakes have rarely been compared. This work tests the uncertainty and accuracy of the most frequently used approaches (Morpho-edaphic index -MEI-, export coefficient, diatoms and pigment-inferred TP models) for 35 subalpine lakes. Furthermore, we propose a new process...

Atmospheric deposition to forests has been monitored within the International Cooperative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests (ICP Forests) with sampling and analyses of bulk precipitation and throughfall at several hundred forested plots for more than 15 years. The current deposition of inorganic nitrogen (ni...

La Valle Anzasca è una delle valli dell'Ossola (Piemonte) e si sviluppa dal massiccio del Monte Rosa, dove nasce il torrente Anza, fino alla sua confluenza con il Toce. A metà Valle Anzasca si trova un affluente del torrente Anza, il Rio Rosso, caratterizzato da acque arsenico ferruginose. Il torrente nasce nell'antica miniera dei Cani, una miniera...

In arid and semi-arid lands with warm climates, aridity and associated water scarcity is more severe because of greater populations and associated water use. The goal of this study was to explore the spatial and temporal variations of the de Martonne and Pinna aridity indices over Iran based on temperature and precipitation data from 41 stations fo...

Eleven European countries participated in an exercise to harmonise diatom-based methods used for status assessment in lakes. Lakes were divided into low, medium and high alkalinity types for this exercise. However, it was not possible to perform a full intercalibration on low alkalinity lakes due to the short gradient and confounding factors. Value...

Litho-palaeoenvironmental Map of Italy during the Last Glacial Maximum (22 ±2 ka cal BP) scale 1: ,000,000 Data: bed rocks; glaciers; loess; vertebrates; Ostracods; lakes; vegetation; Po plain; marine bathymetry; shore lines; Alpine foothills; sea surface temperature; archeology and active faults

Litho-palaeoenvironmental Map of Italy during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (8 ±1 ka cal BP) average surface air temperature of about 2°C higher than today; scale 1: ,000,000. Data: bed rocks; glaciers; loess; vertebrates; Ostracods; lakes; vegetation; Po plain; marine bathymetry; shore lines; Alpine foothills; sea surface temperature; archeology a...

Litho-palaeoenvironmental Map of Italy during the Last Glacial Maximum (22 ±2 ka cal BP) average air temperature of about 4.5 °C lower than today. 1:1,000,000 scale. Data: bed rocks; glaciers; loess; vertebrates; Ostracods; lakes; vegetation; Po plain; marine bathymetry; shore lines; Alpine foothills; sea surface temeprature; archeology and active...

: Current state and temporal evolution of the chemical composition of atmospheric depositions in forest areas of the CONECOFOR network. Since 1997, atmospheric deposition was sampled and analyzed in the permanent plots of the Italian network for the evaluation of forest health (CONECOFOR), under the coordination of the Italian Forest Service. This...

1. Introduction of alien species is one of the major threats to aquatic biota and knowledge of the major correlates of their occurrence is pivotal in planning reliable conservation strategies. 2. To understand whether specific freshwater habitats are more likely to be invaded than others, a dataset on the occurrence of 1604 species in 54 taxonomic...

We studied forest monitoring data collected at permanent plots in Italy over the period 2000-2009 to identify the possible impact of nitrogen (N) deposition on soil chemistry, tree nutrition and growth. Average N throughfall (N-NO3 +N-NH4 ) ranged between 4 and 29 kg ha(-1) yr(-1) , with Critical Loads (CLs) for nutrient N exceeded at several sites...

Intercalibration report for the Italian method for evaluating lake ecological quality from diatoms

One of the key actions identified by the Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC) is to develop ecological assessment tools and carry out a European intercalibration (IC) exercise. The aim of the Intercalibration is to ensure that the values assigned by each Member State to the good ecological class boundaries are consistent with the Directive’s...