Marco Palma

Cranfield University · Department of Environmental Science and Technology

Anthropogenic activities have transformed the pelagic habitat in the last decades with profound implications for its essential functions. While the EU-Marine Strategy Framework Directive 2008/56/EC and the Commission Decision (EU) 2017/848 have set criteria and methodological standards for the assessment and determination of Good Environmental Stat...

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires that Good Environmental Status (GES) should be achieved in EU marine waters as described by eleven environmental Descriptors, each of them assessed by several GES Criteria. At the core of the GES assessment lies the need for threshold values (TVs) which enable a quantitative assessment of envi...

Savalia savaglia is an ecosystem engineer listed as Near-Threatened by the IUCN, even though effective management and proper monitoring efforts to assess its distribution is still lacking. The record of large, long-established colonies can indicate the occurrence of areas with limited human local pressure. These areas may be considered as proxies f...

Paper presented at the OMC Med Energy Conference and Exhibition, Ravenna, Italy, September 2021. Paper Number: OMC-2021-239 Published: September 28 2021 Despite the OSPAR Convention decisions, the Oil&Gas installations placed in the marine environment can have positive impacts on marine ecology, providing hard substrates and habitats to species, i...

Marine animal forests are benthic communities dominated by sessile suspension feeders (such as sponges, corals, and bivalves) able to generate three-dimensional (3D) frameworks with high structural complexity. The biodiversity and functioning of marine animal forests are strictly related to their 3D complexity. The present paper aims at providing n...

Non-tropical marine protected areas (MPAs) are likely to experience growing demand from scuba diving tourism, given the pressures on their tropical counterparts. The vulnerability of non-tropical MPAs to the impacts of diving tourism calls for monitoring and sustainable management of diving activities to ensure conservation. This study contributes...

The diversity of Porifera from Ponta do Ouro (Mozambique) has been evaluated; this paper presents the first taxonomic effort devoted to sponges in the area, while studies of closeby areas are quite dated. Overall, 55 specimens were examined, leading to 26 described species; among these, four are new (Hyattella sulfurea Calcinai & Belfiore sp. nov.,...

Recreational diving is known to have both direct and indirect impacts on coral habitats. Direct impacts include increasing sedimentation, breaks and diseases that lead to a decrease in the richness and abundances of hard corals. Indirect impacts include urban development, land management and sewage disposal. The ecological effects of scuba diving o...

Thanks to several European directives and conventions there is a general increase of awareness regarding the key ecological role of coralligenous habitats in the Mediterranean Sea, addressing several research projects to standardize protocols for the description of its integrity. Here we surveyed 13 stations along the Italian coasts of the Western...

Scuba diving experience–which can include accumulated diving experience and familiarity with a diving location–is an important descriptor of diver specialisation and behaviour. Formulating and applying generalisations on scuba diving experience and its effects could assist the management of diving destinations around the world. This requires resear...

Visual sampling techniques represent a valuable resource for a rapid, non-invasive data acquisition for underwater monitoring purposes. Long-term monitoring projects usually requires the collection of large quantities of data, and the visual analysis of a human expert operator remains, in this context, a very time consuming task. It has been estima...

Animal forests enhance Mediterranean coralligenous habitat biodiversity and functioning. Their monitoring is paramount to assess the conservation status of the habitat and to plan restoration actions for addressing the Good Environmental Status as required by the EU legislation. Scuba diving investigations allow fine data collection up to -70 m but...

Sets of two dimensional images are insufficient to capture the development in time and space of three-dimensional structures. The 2D ‘flattening’ of photographs results in a significant loss of features especially if the photos were taken by one person. Automatically collecting and aligning photos in order to render 3D structures from 2D images wit...

Damage caused by flood events is expected to increase in the coming decades driven by increased land use pressures and climate change impacts. The insurance sector needs accurate and efficient loss adjustment methodologies for flood events. These can include remote sensing approaches that enable the rapid estimation of (i) damage caused to property...

Citizen Science (CS) strengthens the relationship between society and science through education and engagement, with win-win benefits. Marine Citizen Science (MCS) is increasingly popular, thanks to society’s growing interest in marine environments and marine issues. Scuba diving significantly increases the potential of MCS, thanks to the skills an...

Published papers on MCS involving scuba divers from 2015 until 2018. The table aims to complement the review by Thiel et al., (2014) on MCS. The list of references was generated through a search in Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science, using the key phrases “Marine Citizen Science” and “scuba diving”, “Citizen Science” and “scuba divers”, and...

English version of the questionnaire survey used for this study. (PDF)

Italian version of the questionnaire survey used for this study. (PDF)

Animal forests promote marine habitats morphological complexity and functioning. The red gorgonian, Paramuricea clavata, is a key structuring species of the Mediterranean coralligenous habitat and an indicator species of climate effects on habitat functioning. P. clavata metrics such as population structure, morphology and biomass inform on the ove...

This study presents a practical method to estimate dimensions of Paramuricea clavata colonies using generic photographic datasets collected across wide areas. Paramuricea clavata is a non-rigid, tree-like octocoral; this morphology greatly affects the quality of the sea fans multi-view stereo matching reconstruction, resulting in hazy and incoheren...

Coral reefs play a key role in coastal protection and habitat provision. They are also well known for their recreational value. Attempts to protect these ecosystems have not successfully stopped large-scale degradation. Significant efforts have been made by government and research organizations to ensure that coral reefs are monitored systematicall...

Conservation and monitoring of marine systems and large-scale underwater data acquisition are too demanding for single researchers. The exploitation of citizen science and the development of new technology can significantly facilitate these action. In this work a novel system that allows scuba divers to collect data during their leisure activity is...

Scuba diving tourism encourages conservation, generates revenue, and supports local communities. Understanding its interactions with environmental, social, and economic factors is important in the context of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), where dynamics between role players are complex. This study provides insights into the problems affecting the s...

In order to obtain robust and measurable data from the marine environment, citizen science projects need user-friendly tools that, during dives, autonomously gather information in an easy, low-cost and integrated way. Data collected from different devices and by different untrained divers must have good estimation of the position where the informat...

Our study demonstrates a cheap and feasible approach to management needs: low costs, quick realization and high mosaic resolution outputs. It supports underwater scientific research in providing a baseline for further in situ investigation and long-term monitoring of underwater habitat

Land cover changes have strong influence on sediment delivery to coastal waters, being a well-recognized threat to nearshore marine habitats. This guideline provides managers with a powerful tool to detect potential runoff increases and make better and preventive coastal-land management decisions.

With the aim to address some of the complex needs of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) management, the results of the “Monitoring Mediterranean Marine Protected Area” project (MMMPA) are here synthesized in a series of timely and original guidelines.

Coralligenous habitats are of special interest in the Mediterranean Sea because they represent one of the most important biodiversity ‘hot-spots’ and are considered of great relevance for fisheries activities in the region. Despite their importance, however, there are missing consensual methodologies for their monitoring and, despite some attempts,...

Geographical information systems (GIS) and diagnostic cartography have traditionally been shown to be useful tools for the application of ecosystem-based management (EBM). To date, bionomic and diagnostic cartographic approaches have been commonly used to support decision-making in the selection, zoning and management of marine protected areas (MPA...

Stakeholder participation has received increased attention as a key process for enhancing mitigation of conflicts between different interests for the same resources and transparent decision-making in marine protected areas (MPAs). A wide range of advanced web tools is available nowadays that integrate stakeholder participation by generating new inf...

Coralligenous habitats are of special interest in the Mediterranean Sea because they represent one of the most important biodiversity ‘hot-spots’ and are considered of great relevance for fisheries activities in the region. Despite their importance, however, there are missing consensual methodologies for their monitoring and, despite some attempts,...

In this study we assess the capacity of the Benthic Terrain Model data for discriminating the diverse coralligenous habitats along the Ligurian coast (Italy) and for providing baseline maps for future monitoring of the changes and evolution of coralligenous environments in the Mediterranean basin. We test the effectiveness of the model and the geop...

Underwater seascapes are often of difficult perception also for insiders if not familiar with diving activities, compromising social awareness towards conservation strategies. With the growing performances of mobile devices and their diffusion, augmented reality (AR) could become a key tool for the visualization of many GeoSpatial datasets. Existin...

Recent studies highlight an increase in the frequency and intensity of marine mass mortalities of several species over the past 30–40 years, mainly in tropical and temperate areas. In the Mediterranean Sea these episodes particularly affect benthic suspension feeders, such as sponges and cnidarians. The main objective of this work was to document t...

Despite the wide distribution of zoanthids, little is known about their pattern of reproduction. Here we investigate the reproductive biology of two Mediterranean species, the common Parazoanthus axinellae (Schmidt) and the rare Savalia savaglia (Bertoloni). For both species, samples were collected during an annual cycle, from January to December 2...

Riassunto – Le anomalie climatiche, che si stanno registrando sempre più frequentemente, hanno gravi ripercussioni ambientali non solo nell'ambiente terrestre ma anche marino. Soprattutto in quest'ultimo caso manca la possibilità di condurre monitoraggi estesi ed a lungo termine. Tale limite compromette una adeguata comprensione dei fenomeni, che s...