Maria Carla De FrancescoUniversità degli Studi del Molise | Università del Molise · Department of Biosciences and Territory
Maria Carla De Francesco
Ph.D.
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37
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Publications
Publications (37)
Recent studies have explored the ecological relationship between native urban forests and self-sown non-native forests in large cities and metropolises but further research efforts dedicated to analyzing this relationship in small cities are still needed. To improve our understanding of the ecology of urban native and alien forests in Mediterranean...
The "Nature Map of the Municipality of Campobasso: Habitat Map at 1:5,000 scale" is presented and described as part of the collaboration between the ISPRA-Carta della Natura group and researchers from the Department of Biosciences and Territory of the University of Molise, in the context of the National Biodiversity Future Center project. The map w...
The poster shows the first results of LIFEPLAN project (https://www.helsinki.fi/en/projects/lifeplan) in the N2K IT7228221 Foce Trigno-Marina di Petacciato in the Molise coast analyzing the the faunistic biodiversity in the site by camera traps and the relation with dune EU habitat conservation.
Results of the urban woods studies in Campobasso, a representative case of study of small inland city for Spoke 5 (Urban), were presented in the first annual report of NBFC (National Biodiversity Future Center) in Palermo, 20th-22th May 2024.
Aims: We introduce ReSurveyEurope — a new data source of resurveyed vegetation
plots in Europe, compiled by a collaborative network of vegetation scientists. We describe
the scope of this initiative, provide an overview of currently available data,
governance, data contribution rules, and accessibility. In addition, we outline further
steps, includ...
Trait‐based ecology has already revealed main independent axes of trait variation defining trait spaces that summarize plant adaptive strategies, but often ignoring intraspecific trait variability (ITV). By using empirical ITV‐level data for two independent dimensions of leaf form and function and 167 species across five habitat types (coastal dune...
Balázs Deák 52 | Guillaume Decocq 53 | Iwona Dembicz 54 | Jürgen Dengler 55,56 | Valter Di Cecco 57 | Jan Dick 58 | Martin Diekmann 59 | Hartmut Dierschke 60, † | Thomas Dirnböck 61 | Inken Doerfler 62 | Jiří Doležal 63,64 | Ute Döring 65 | Tomasz Durak 66 | Ciara Dwyer 67 | Rasmus Ejrnaes 68 | Inna Ermakova 69 | Brigitta Erschbamer 70 | Giuliano F...
The general aim is to assess the landscape diversity and the ecological value of a multifunctional and diversified farm in an Italian inner area. The study was carried out in the context of the national DEMETRA research project, aimed at developing and implementing integrated and multifunctional agricultural production systems with a high degree of...
Coastal ecosystems, encompassing land and marine environments and hosting substantial biodiversity, are among the most threatened worldwide. The European Habitats Directive prioritises coastal habitats and species, requiring legislative, direct protection, monitoring, and informational measures. Accurate habitat and species monitoring is crucial to...
Aim of the poster is to identify a set of sites along the Abruzzo coast, inside and outside the Natura 2000 network and regional protected areas, where vegetation was analyzed and will be periodically monitored to analyze the ecological effects of
land use and climate change, alien species invasion and coastal erosion. The data collected will also...
Invasive alien plants (IAP) pose a major threat to biodiversity and have a negative impact on the integrity and conservation status of plant communities. Mediterranean dunes are widely exposed to IAP, due to their environmental heterogeneity and the anthropogenic pressures to which they are subjected. The current study explored the possible existen...
Coastal wetlands are biodiversity hotspots, highly threatened, and for which restoration actions have been widely implemented. Systematic monitoring of biodiversity after restoration actions on Mediterranean salt marshes vegetation needs further attention. We analyzed temporal changes in plant species composition and ecology in a restored brackish...
Il manuale si colloca nell’ambito dei progetti LIFE17 NAT/IT/000565 CALLIOPE (Coastal
dune hAbitats, subLittoraL sandbanks, marine reefs: cOnservation, Protection, and thrEats
Mitigation) e LIFE16 NAT/IT/000589 REDUNE - (REstoration of DUNE habitats in Natura
2000 sites of the Veneto coast) e come capitalizzazione delle azioni del progetto LIFE1...
New Italian data on the distribution of the Annex I Habitats 1510*, 2130*, 2250*, 3180*, 3260, 5230*, 6410, 7140, 7220*, 9320 are
reported in this contribution. Specifically, 14 new occurrences in Natura 2000 sites are presented and 20 new cells are added in the
EEA 10 km × 10 km reference grid. The new data refer to the Italian administrative regi...
Beach litter accumulation patterns are influenced by biotic and abiotic factors, as well as by
the distribution of anthropogenic sources. Although the importance of comprehensive approaches
to deal with anthropogenic litter pollution is acknowledged, integrated studies including geomorphologic, biotic, and anthropic factors in relation to beach deb...
The 8th International Symposium "Monitoring of Mediterranean Coastal Areas. Problems and Measurements Techniques" was organized by CNR-IBE in collaboration with FCS Foundation, and Natural History Museum of the Mediterranean and under the patronage of University of Florence, Accademia dei Geogofili, Tuscany Region and Livorno Province. It is the oc...
The 8th International Symposium "Monitoring of Mediterranean Coastal Areas. Problems and Measurements Techniques" was organized by CNR-IBE in collaboration with FCS Foundation, and Natural History Museum of the Mediterranean and under the patronage of University of Florence, Accademia dei Geogofili, Tuscany Region and Livorno Province. It is the oc...
In the Mediterranean sandy coasts, urban expansion mainly occurs to support seaside tourism, causing a drastic loss of natural coastal dune habitats and the associated ecosystem services. We investigated on a representative tract of the Mediterranean coast to which extent land conversion into urban areas affected natural dune ecosystems and the rel...
Beach litter threatens coastal dunes integrity across the world. European countries are committed to improving the environmental status of the marine and coastal environment by 2020, and to do this, they need to reduce the gap of knowledge about litter accumulation patterns in coastal environments. We analyzed the distribution pattern of waste, dif...
This work provides a contribution to the evaluation of the environmental impact of beach litter in the dune ecosystems of coastal protected areas of Southern Abruzzo and Molise. The litter was classified depending on the material type and its use before becoming waste; moreover, the beach litter accumulation was analyzed for each EU
habitat of coa...
Coastal sand dunes are complex transitional systems hosting high levels of biodiversity and providing important benefits to society. In this paper we aimed to evaluate the multi-service nature of ecosystem services (ES) supply in the dunes of the Italian Adriatic coastwithin Natura 2000 (N2K) sites. We i) identified ES indicators and assessed the s...
Coastal sand dunes are complex transitional systems hosting high levels of biodiversity and providing important benefits to society. In this paper we aimed to evaluate the multi-service nature of ecosystem services (ES) supply in the dunes of the Italian Adriatic coast within Natura 2000 (N2K) sites. We i) identified ES indicators and assessed the...
Coastal sand dunes are complex transitional systems hosting high levels of biodiversity and providing important benefits to society. In this paper we aimed to evaluate the multi-service nature of ecosystem services (ES) supply in the dunes of the Italian Adriatic coast within Natura 2000 (N2K) sites. We i) identified ES indicators and assessed the...
Beach litter is an increasingly important threat, causing a drastic loss of natural biodiversity and the associated ecosystem services. Even if beach litter accumulation in oceanic coasts has been analyzed quite well, new research efforts are still necessary to better understand this phenomenon along the Mediterranean coasts. This work sets out to...
Phenotypic changes in the mammalian mandible can occur at different spatial and temporal scales. We investigated mandibular size and shape variation in three extant closely related dolphins (Cetacea, Odontoceti): Tursiops truncatus, Stenella coeruleoalba and Delphinus delphis in order to test the hypothesis that similar phenotypic changes occur acr...
The aim of this study was to describe the pattern of morphological variation of the bottlenose dolphin in the Mediterranean Sea and to verify the existence of sub-populations, based on differences in cranial morphology investigated through a Geometric Morphometric (GM) approach.
The Adriatic Sea represents a vulnerable ecosystem and need an Integrated Coastal Management to protect, conserve and manage the coastal and marine areas. This preliminary work proposes a local case study aimed to the characterization of coastal marine habitats along Teatina coast (Abruzzo, central Italy), carrying out 11 transects parallel to the...
Feeding adaptation, social behaviour, and interspecific interactions related to sexual dimorphism and allometric growth are particularly challenging to be investigated in the high sexual monomorphic Delphinidae. We used geometric morphometrics to extensively explore sexual dimorphism and ontogenetic allometry of different projections of the skull a...
Geometric morphometric studies of dolphins have traditionally concentrated on the skull, while the mandible and its modularity have been little explored. We investigated the mandible variability and modularity in three strictly related Mediterranean dolphins: Stenella coeruleoalba, Delphinus delphis and Tursiops truncatus. The aims were to describe...
Since 1985, the Centro Studi Cetacei (Cetacean Study Centre) in Italy has been committed to the recovery of cetaceans stranded along the Italian coastlines to estimate the abundance of species pre-sent and to identify causes of death, disease, and other information useful to the study of cetaceans. The current study analyzed some external morpho-me...
Questions
Question (1)
Hello! Where can I see the distribution of marine alien species in the Adriatic Sea? Is there an online platform? Thank you