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267
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Introduction
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January 2008 - present
Publications
Publications (57)
Extreme sea levels (ESLs) affect coastal ecosystems worldwide. Protection and adaptation strategies rely on the characterization of the extreme's occurrence probability in the future. However, knowledge on the occurrence rate and duration of ESLs is also needed to properly characterize the associated future risk. In this paper, we focus on the Veni...
Increased coastal flooding caused by extreme sea levels (ESLs) is one of the major hazards related to sea level rise. Estimates of return levels
obtained under the framework provided by extreme-event theory might be biased under climatic non-stationarity. Additional uncertainty is related to the choice of the model. In this work, we fit several ext...
This paper analyses the variability of the sea level in the Mediterranean Sea and its reproduction with a barotropic model, with and without applying data assimilation. The impact of data assimilation is considered in hindcast and forecast simulations, considering its usefulness for both reanalysis studies and short-term forecasts. We used a two-di...
The Habitat Directive of European Union lists Costal Lagoons (habitat code 1150 *) among priority habitats because they are in danger of disappearance. Natural ecosystems may recover from anthropogenic perturbations; however, the recovery can follow natural restoration or it can be redirected through ecological restoration by anthropogenic interven...
The Life Lagoon Refresh project, started in 2017 and lasted 5 years, aimed at diverting a freshwater flow from the Sile River into an area of the Venice lagoon. The goal is the restoration of the ecotonal environment typical of microtidal lagoons characterized by a marked salt gradient and large areas vegetated by reeds. The project also aimed at i...
Coastal flooding caused by extreme sea levels (ESLs) is one of the major impacts related to the climate change. It is expected to increase in the future due to sea level rise and storm surge intensification. Estimates of return levels obtained under the framework provided by extreme events theory might be biased under climatic non-stationarity. Add...
Responses of the macrozoobenthic community to an ecological restoration activity in the
northern Venice lagoon were studied, within the scope of the project LIFE SEagrass RESTOration
aimed at recreating aquatic phanerogam meadows largely reduced in recent decades. Transplants
were successful in almost all project areas. Macrozoobenthos was sampled...
Eutrophication represents one of the most impacting threats for the ecological status and related ecosystem services of transitional waters; hence, its assessment plays a key role in the management of these ecosystems. A new multi-index method for eutrophication assessment, based on the ecological index MaQI (Macrophyte Quality Index), the trophic...
Large lagoons usually show a salinity gradient due to fresh water tributaries with inner areas characterized by lower mean values and higher fluctuation of salinity than seawater-dominated areas. In the Venice Lagoon, this ecotonal environment, characterized in the past by oligo-mesohaline waters and large intertidal areas vegetated by reedbeds, wa...
Ecological Engineering has been increasingly used to recreate and restore ecosystems degraded by previous human activities, restoring natural processes by recovering suitable conditions for habitats and species of high conservation value, introducing ecosystem functions and services evaluation in water resources management. In this framework, the L...
As in most of the coastal wetlands worldwide, starting from the 2nd half of XX century Venice lagoon suffered from eutrophication, mainly due to industrial development and changes in the land use. In the last decades, several measures were implemented to reduce nutrient inputs from the watershed and ecological restoration projects took place or are...
The Venice Lagoon is the largest wetland in the Mediterranean.
Since 2011, ISPRA and ARPAV have assessed the ecological status of Water Bodies (WBs) of the Venice Lagoon, within the Water Framework Directive (WFD), which includes monitoring of physical and chemical parameters in water. Veneto Region has funded monitoring activities. The present wo...
This paper reviews the state of the art in storm surge forecasting and its particular application in the northern Adriatic Sea. The city of Venice already depends on operational storm surge forecasting systems to warn the population and economy of imminent flood threats, as well as help to protect the extensive cultural heritage. This will be more...
The paper reports the results obtained after 4 years of aquatic angiosperm transplants in areas of the Venice Lagoon (North Adriatic Sea, Mediterranean) where meadows almost disappeared due to eutrophication, pollution and overexploitation of clam resources. The project LIFE12 NAT/IT/000331-SeResto, funded by the European Union, allowed to recoloni...
Analysis of coastal and transitional aquatic ecosystem evolution to improve the climate change monitoring and planning of adaptation in those areas, especially in the 5 pilot sites foreseen in the Change We Care project.
www.italy-croatia.eu/web/changewecare
This paper reviews the state-of-the-art in storm surge forecasting and its particular application in the northern Adriatic Sea. The city of Venice relies crucially on a good flood forecasting system in order to protect the extensive cultural heritage, their population, and their economic activities. Storm surge forecasting systems are in place to w...
Since the 1960s, the Venice Lagoon has suffered a sharp aquatic plant constriction due to eutrophication, pollution, and clam fishing. Those anthropogenic impacts began to decline during the 2010s, and since then the ecological status of the lagoon has improved, but in many choked areas no plant recolonization has been recorded due to the lack of s...
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires Member States to assess the ecological
status of water bodies and provide an estimation of the classification confidence and precision. This
study tackles the issue of the uncertainty in the classification, due to the spatial variability within
each water body, proposing an analysis of the reliability of...
A restoration project is planned to take place in the northern Venice lagoon (northern Adriatic Sea, Italy), aiming at introducing freshwater into a confined shallow water lagoon area and recreating transitional water habitats. This work describes the shifts in the nekton (fish and decapods) community structure to be expected following the future s...
La Direttiva Acque 2000/60/CE richiede che ciascuno Stato Membro valuti lo stato ecologico dei corpi idrici (CI) e fornisca una stima della confidenza e precisione della classificazione. Il compromesso tra sforzo di campionamento e affidabilità della classificazione è un tema rilevante per le attività di monitoraggio istituzionali, in particolare p...
The LIFE LAGOON REFRESH project foresees the diversion of a freshwater flow from the Sile river into the lagoon, necessary for recreation of the typical salt gradient of buffer areas between lagoon and mainland, for restoration of the reedbed habitat, strongly reduced until XX century (D’Alpaos e Carniello, 2010), and for improvement of the Lagoon...
The LIFE LAGOON REFRESH project, started on September 2017, foresees the restoration of favourable conservation status of habitat 1150* (Coastal lagoons), in the northern Venice Lagoon (SCI IT3250031), and the recreation of favourable habitats for faunal species of community interest. The project actions involve: diversion of a freshwater flow from...
Coastal salt marshes are among the Earth's most productive ecosystems and provide a number of ecosystem services.
Water quality regulation by storing, transforming and releasing nutrients, organic matter and suspended
sediment is recognized as one of the most important functions of salt marshes. The self-purification capacity of
intertidal ecosyste...
Il progetto LIFE16 NAT/
IT/000663 Lagoon Refresh
Coastal lagoon habitat
(1150*) and species recovery by restoring the salt
gradient increasing fresh
water input è iniziato il
01/09/2017 e ha una durata di 5 anni. Prevede il
ripristino, nel SIC Laguna
Superiore di Venezia
(IT3250031), dell’ambiente ecotonale tipico delle lagune
microtidali, caratter...
Poster presented at SETAC Europe 28th Annual Meeting no.275
SECTION: “Salt of the earth - causes, consequences and management of salinization of surface freshwaters, groundwaters and soils”
Keywords: salinity, restoration, seagrass, reedbed
Butyltins (BTs) - i.e. mono- (MBT), di- (DBT) and tributyltin (TBT) - are synthetic compounds worldwide used in industrial and agricultural applications giving rise to contamination of aquatic environments. Organotins, which include BTs, were banned on antifouling paints, the main route to aquatic pollution, by Reg. 782/2003/EC. Presently, due to t...
The Transitional Water Quality Index (TWQI) is a simple tool for assessing the trophic status in shallow transitional water ecosystems, that can be easily implemented from basic monitoring activities. It integrates six metrics: the main causal factors of eutrophication (N and P concentrations), key biological elements (phytoplankton chlorophyll-a,...
The LIFE SERSTO project aims to restore seagrass medow in SIC IT3250031 “Northern Lagoon of Venice” (Italy). This area experienced a wide seagrass regression in ’90 and 2000. In last decade the water quality improved and environmental conditions resulted suitable for seagrass growth. A large scale transplanting activity started in 2014 to trigger t...
Water quality regulation is recognized as an important ecosystem service provided by saltmarhes, by storing, transforming and releasing nutrients, organic matter and suspended sediment. Several studies investigated fluxes between saltmarshes and surrounding waters, providing different results and highlighting that the import-export balance is stron...
Eutrophication has been considered one of the major threats to the health and integrity of inland, transitional, coastal and marine water ecosystems in the last decades. A number of European Commission Directives requires that Member States have to monitor parameters relevant to eutrophication and set ecologically relevant guideline values. Eutroph...
Ecosystem services deriving from coastal wetlands recreation: ex ante evaluation of environmental and economic benefits. Sacca di Goro case study
The acknowledgement of the wide range of ecological and economic benefits provided by natural wetland ecosystems has prompted increasing interest in the re-construction of wetland ecosystems also in the f...
Ecosystem services deriving from coastal wetlands recreation: ex ante evaluation of environmental and economic benefits. Sacca di Goro case study.
The acknowledgement of the wide range of ecological and economic benefits provided by natural wetland ecosystems has prompted increasing interest in the re-construction of wetland ecosystems also in the...
Ecosystem services deriving from coastal wetlands recreation: ex ante evaluation of environmental and economic benefits. Sacca di Goro case study.
The acknowledgement of the wide range of ecological and economic benefits provided by natural wetland ecosystems has prompted increasing interest in the re-construction of wetland ecosystems also in the...
Ecosystem services deriving from coastal wetlands recreation: ex ante evaluation of environmental and economic benefits. Sacca di Goro case study
The acknowledgement of the wide range of ecological and economic benefits provided by natural wetland ecosystems has prompted increasing interest in the re-construction of wetland ecosystems also in the f...
Pristine conditions in transitional water ecosystems are characterized by the dominance of aquatic angiosperms. Aquatic plants consolidate bottoms, prevent erosion, support benthic and fish communities as nursery and food areas, and favour the bird presence. Hence, they may contribute to the achievement of a good ecological status as required by th...
Pristine conditions in transitional water ecosystems are characterized by the dominance of aquatic angiosperms. Aquatic plants consolidate bottoms, prevent erosion, support benthic and fish communities as nursery and food areas, and favour the bird presence. Hence, they may contribute to the achievement of a good ecological status as required by th...
The proposed study aims to investigate the potential of phytoremediation for the treatment of mildly polluted sediments using autochthonous halophytes. Sediments and plant species were collected from tidal flat and saltmarshes in the Venice lagoon. Two different activities were carried out: 1) mesocosm experiments; 2) in-situ monitoring activity....
The macrophyte quality index (MaQI) for the assessment of the ecological status of transitional systems has been recently adopted by the Italian Law in agreement with the WFD(2000/60/EC) requirements and successfully intercalibrated in the framework of the WFD intercalibration exercise. In this paper the last structure of MaQI is presented and disc...
Seagrass meadows play a crucial role for the preservation of coastal environments, as they support biotic communities, improve water quality and reduce erosion effects. SeResto (LIFE12 NAT/IT/000331) has been recently funded to achieve the following objectives in Venice Lagoon (Adriatic Sea, Italy):
- Restoring and consolidating Habitats 1150* by t...
The ecosystem functions of seagrass meadows are multiple: they provide food to consumers and are trap carbon and nutrient thanks to their physiological function; they have a structural role and are important habitats for other species contributing to maintain marine biodiversity. Seagrass loss by natural and human-induced disturbance has been recor...
Nell’ambito della pianificazione della fascia costiera, la realizzazione di aree umide sta riscuotendo un sempre maggiore interesse a livello internazionale. La capacità di questi ambienti di fornire molteplici servizi ecosistemici porta ad includere questi interventi tra le possibili misure di mitigazione e compensazione di diversi impatti antropi...
According to Directive 2008/105/EC, the Italian Parliament issued in 2010 the Legislative Decree 219, which determined the environmental quality standard (EQS) for sediment of marine coastal areas, lagoons and coastal ponds. For the purpose of trend monitoring, sediment and biota are the most suitable matrices for many substances. Directive 2008/10...
The Sacca di Goro lagoon is a shallow-water embayment located in the Southern part of the Po River delta (Italy) with a surface area of about 30 square kilometers and an average depth of approximately 1-1.5 m. The water exchanges between the Sacca di Goro and the adjacent Adriatic Sea depend on two openings in the southern sand barrier. The lagoon...
We have monitored and analyzed, through remote sensing and ancillary field surveys, the rapid (O(1) year) development of a tidal network within a newly established artificial salt marsh in the Venice Lagoon. After the construction of the salt marsh, a network of volunteer creeks established themselves away from an artificially constructed main chan...
Projects
Project (1)
The LIFE LAGOON REFRESH (- Coastal lagoon habitat (1150*) and species recovery restoring the salt gradient by increasing fresh water input) project foresees the restoration of favourable conservation status of habitat 1150* in Venice’s northern lagoon (ITALY) and recreates habitat for faunal species of community interest.
The project actions involve:
- diversion of a freshwater flow from the Sile river into the lagoon of Venice (necessary for the recreation of the typical salt gradient of buffer areas between lagoon and mainland);
- restoration of intertidal morphology through the implementation of structures properly arranged to slow down the freshwater dispersion and to favour reed development;
- planting of Phragmites australis to accelerate the development of the reedbeds;
- transplantation of small clumps of seagrass species of the habitat 1150*, suitable to accelerate the recolonization by aquatic plants of low-salinity environments.
The project aims to conserve coastal lagoons to exploit the ecosystem services provided by this habitat to:
(i) recreate typical estuarine ecological characteristics, in order to counteract the depletion of lagoon bottom and fish communities;
(ii) reduce eutrophication through phytoremediation function of reed beds, favouring the presence of sensitive species and aquatic plants of high ecological value;
(iii) improve the conservation status of bird species including those listed in Annex I of the Birds Directive;
(iv) increase the presence of fish species, listed in Annex II of the Habitats Directive.
