Simona Castaldi

Università degli Studi della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" (previous Second University of Naples) · Scienze e Tecnologie Ambientali Biologiche e Farmaceutiche

Soil functionality is strongly dependent on the soil microbiota, which in turn is affected by soil quality and climate. Among global change factors, desertification is the most threatening ecosystem change affecting southern Europe, but the effects on the soil microbiota are largely unknown. In this study, we investigated soil microbial biomass and...

The global food system is a major contributor to climate change with 23–42% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Thus, the transition to sustainable food systems and dietary patterns represents a big challenge and a key solution to feed a fast-growing world population while maintaining safe planet boundaries of sustainability. Organic farming i...

Background and Aims Human and planetary health are inextricably interconnected through food systems. Food choices account for 50% of all deaths for cardiovascular disease (CVD) – the leading cause of death in Europe – and food systems generate up to 37% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Methods and Results A dietary pattern able to optimize...

The Mediterranean diet (MD) is a world-renowned healthy dietary pattern. In the present study we analyse the climate sustainability of the MD and the greenhouse gas emissions (E GHG ) associated with current dietary patterns in Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean EU countries, focusing on the major deviations from the MD health and environmental ta...

The assessment of soil erosion rate, especially in agricultural lands, represents a fundamental tool for land management planning in the long-term period. In this study, the SWAT model was utilized to simulate soil erosion within a semi-arid watershed in South Portugal. The model was successfully calibrated and validated using real data of streamfl...

Le foreste svolgono un ruolo essenziale nella mitigazione degli effetti del cambiamento climatico e nel mantenimento dei servizi ecosistemici. Tuttavia, disturbi forestali come la siccità e gli incendi influenzano negativamente l’integrità del nostro patrimonio boschivo, causando diffusi eventi di deperimento ed elevati tassi di mortalità. Questi d...

Soil functionality is strongly dependent on the soil microbiota, which in turn is affected by soil quality and climate. Among global change factors, desertification is the most threatening ecosystem change affecting southern Europe, but the effects on the soil microbiota are largely unknown. In this study, we investigated soil microbial biomass and...

Agricultural soils are a major source of greenhouse gases. Biochar is a soil improver and, when applied to the soil, sequesters carbon. However, a different combination of soil and climatic conditions and biochar leads to different research results. In this research, the effects of 1 kg/m2 and 3 kg/m2 biochar application to clay soils on the CO2 fl...

Soil quality is fundamental for ecosystem long term functionality, productivity and resilience to current climatic changes. Despite its importance, soil is lost and degraded at dramatic rates worldwide. In Europe, the Mediterranean areas are a hotspot for soil erosion and land degradation due to a combination of climatic conditions, soils, geomorph...

Informing and engaging citizens to adopt sustainable diets is a key strategy for reducing global environmental impacts of the agricultural and food sectors. In this respect, the first requisite to support citizens and actors of the food sector is to provide them a publicly available, reliable and ready to use synthesis of environmental pressures as...

Forests play a key role in mitigating greenhouse gases and fighting climate change. However, numerous environmental stressors threaten the integrity and ecological functionalities of forests. In recent decades, the increase of drought events and fires occurrence is negatively influencing forest health, causing dieback events and higher rates of mor...

Research Highlights: Monitoring of soil CH 4 fluxes in African tropical forest conducted run for almost two years, contributing to the scant information on greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes from forests available from this region. Data showed that the forest soil acted as a net yearly source of CH 4. Hotspots of CH 4 emissions were measured both in uplan...

Urban green infrastructure plays an increasingly significant role in sustainable urban development planning as it provides important regulating and cultural ecosystem services. Monitoring of such dynamic and complex systems requires technological solutions which provide easy data collection, processing, and utilization at affordable costs. To meet...

Understanding and quantifying the global methane (CH4) budget is important for assessing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. Atmospheric emissions and concentrations of CH4 continue to increase, making CH4 the second most important human-influenced greenhouse gas in terms of climate forcing, after carbon dioxide (CO2). The relative impor...

In the Mediterranean Basin, fire incidence has increased dramatically during the past decades and fire is expected to become more severe in the future due to climate change. The effects of fires on forest ecosystems can last several years: the survival of fire-injured trees depend not only on the adaptive traits of individual species, but also on t...

Soil is a key component of ecosystems as it provides fundamental ecosystem functions and services, first of all supporting primary productivity, by physical, chemical and biological interaction with plants. However, soil loss and degradation are at present two of the most critical environmental issues. This phenomenon is particularly critical in Me...

China has experienced rapid agricultural development over recent decades, accompanied by increased fertilizer consumption in croplands; yet, the trend and drivers of the associated nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emissions remain uncertain. The primary sources of this uncertainty are the coarse spatial variation of activity data and the incomplete model repr...

The study investigates the effect of biochar on nitrous oxide emission in Endoargic Anthrosols in the southern territory of the Russian Far East. Biochar (bio-charcoal) was applied in the amounts of 1 kg/m ² and 3 kg/m ² in combination with organic and mineral fertilizers to drained and drain-free fields during the vegetation season, and the five-g...

Recently, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have grown rapidly and represent now a unique opportunity to improve our environmental monitoring capabilities at extremely low costs. IoT is a new system of thinking in which objects, animals or people are equipped with unique identifiers and transfer data a network without requiring human-to-human o...

Gli incendi btoschivi stonto un eventto rictorrente nel bacinto del Mediterraneto e rappresentanto unto dei maggitori fattori di disturbto per le ftoreste. Durante un incendito, il caltore sprigitonatto dalle fiamme determina, diretamente to indiretamente, un trauma termicto nella pianta, che può generare efeti negativi sui prtocessi ectofisitoltog...

The EU food chain is at present highly carbon and water intensive. A significant contribution to reduce carbon emissions and water footprints can be achieved through the adoption of a more sustainable and healthier diet. However, while people are generally aware that food affects their health, the impact that food production and consumption have on...

The increasing population, food consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are pushing our planet through a transformation never experienced before. The Paris Agreement (PA) has recognized the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the adverse impacts of c...

Mediterranean forests are subject to prolonged droughts (Gitlin et al., 2006): the lack of water entails in the plant’s traumatic events (cavitation, carbon starvation, biotic attacks) that can lead to tree mortality (McDowell et al., 2008). An increasing number of ecophysiological studies are currently trying to understand the responses of plants...

The composition and turnover time (TT)of organic matter in soil fractions with different magnetic susceptibility were studied in a tropical primary forest in Ghana. The starting hypothesis was that soil organic matter (SOM)composition and properties depend on the magnetic susceptibility of the minerals SOM is associated with. Soil samples from 0 to...

Denitrification is a key microbial-mediated reaction buffering the impact of agriculturally-derived nitrate loads. Groundwater denitrification capacity is often assessed by measuring the magnitude and patterns of dinitrogen excess, although this method can be biased by dissolved gasses exsolution and ebullition. To address this issue, shallow groun...

China has experienced rapid agricultural development over recent decades, accompanied by increased fertilizer consumption in croplands, yet the trend and drivers of the associated nitrous oxide (N2 O) emissions remain uncertain. The primary sources of this uncertainty are the coarse spatial variation of activity data and the incomplete model repres...

Forest fires are a critical issue in the Mediterranean basin, increasing their frequency and intensity in the last decades (IPCC 2014). Understanding post-fire responses of trees is a crucial issue in planning forest management actions of burned areas in the short term and fire risk reduction at the medium and long term. This research aims to verif...

The EU food chain is at present highly carbon and water intensive. A significant contribution to reducing carbon emissions and pressure on water resources resulting from overuse might come from the adoption of a more sustainable and healthier diet. While people are generally aware that the food they eat is an important factor affecting their health...

Urbanization is a key land-use change pathway, increasing urban population and resulting in abandonment of rural areas. Urbanization alters profoundly soil properties and functions, including soil respiration [90]. Soil respiration includes heterotrophic (microbial) and autotrophic (root) components. Both are driven by biotic and abiotic factors. S...

Fire is a major factor controlling global carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling. While direct C and N losses caused by combustion have been comparably well established, important knowledge gaps remain on post‐fire N losses. Here we quantified both direct C and N combustion losses as well as post‐fire gaseous losses (N2O, NO and N2) and N leaching aft...

The emergence of Russia as a major grain exporter is not only crucial for the world commercial agriculture and food security, but also for the country’s economy. Here we examine the past-to-future thermal suitability for winter wheat (Triticum aestivum, L. 1753) cultivation over Russia and compare it with the recent trends of wheat yields and harve...

Compared with annual crop cultivation, tree groves might represent a relevant land‐use system to improve C sequestration, but few data are available to support this hypothesis. To evaluate the potential of olive tree (Olea europaea L., 1753) cultivation to store soil organic C (SOC), we assessed (i) the distribution of organic C in active (water‐ex...

Following the recent Global Carbon Project (GCP) synthesis of the decadal methane (CH4) budget over 2000–2012 (Saunois et al., 2016), we analyse here the same dataset with a focus on quasi-decadal and inter-annual variability in CH4 emissions. The GCP dataset integrates results from top-down studies (exploiting atmospheric observations within an at...

Agricultural soils generally have a low content of organic matter, which affects soil fertility and hence crop yields. The use of olive pomace as an organic amendment could enhance soil properties due to its high content of organic matter and exchangeable cations as well as its extensive availability. However, little is known about the potentially...

Following the recent Global Carbon project (GCP) synthesis of the decadal methane (CH4) budget over 2000–2012 (Saunois et al., 2016), we analyse here the same dataset with a focus on quasi-decadal and inter-annual variability in CH4 emissions. The GCP dataset integrates results from top-down studies (exploiting atmospheric observations within an at...

Despite many studies in literature demonstrate the environmental sustainability of organic food, a debate is still open in the scientific community on the effect of organic farming on global warming and climate change mitigation. This paper aims to contribute to a more informed debate on the actual contribution to climate change in terms of GHG emi...

The global methane (CH4) budget is becoming an increasingly important component for managing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. This relevance, due to a shorter atmospheric lifetime and a stronger warming potential than carbon dioxide, is challenged by the still unexplained changes of atmospheric CH4 over the past decade. Emissions and...

The global methane (CH4) budget is becoming an increasingly important component for managing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. This relevance, due to a shorter atmospheric lifetime and a stronger warming potential than carbon dioxide, is challenged by the still unexplained changes of atmospheric CH4 over the past decade. Emissions and...

Atmospheric deposition can be a significant source of reactive nitrogen (Nr) in terrestrial ecosystems and might play a relevant role for both N cycle processes and NC cycle interactions. However, detailed studies and annual budgets of Nr deposition are scarce in many regions of the globe, particularly dry depositions in tropical areas. In this stu...

The production of bioenergy in Europe is one of the strategies conceived to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The suitability of the land use change from a cropland (REF site) to a short-rotation coppice plantation of hybrid poplar (SRC site) was investigated by comparing the GHG budgets of these two systems over 24 months in Viterbo, Italy. T...

Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from several Italian croplands along a latitudinal gradient were analyzed and the fertilizer induced emission (FIE) factor, for each single fertilization event, was calculated. Data show that the average emission factor was between 0.7 and 0.3 %, hence much lower than the IPCC EF used for temperate croplands. The relat...

Agricultural soils are generally characterized by a low content of organic matter (SOM). SOM values less than 1.5% can alter soil structure, with negative effects on crop development, affecting also soil biota. Consequently, agricultural practices aiming to increase SOM (e.g. organic amendment) can be useful to enhance physical, chemical, biologica...

Italy contributes about for 20% to the European olive oil production, generating more than 2000 t of wastes yearly. The problems related to the disposal of these by-products are increasing and to analyze the environmental effects of their agricultural use can be fundamental to face the waste removal problem and to preserve soil quality. In this stu...

Key message Variations in stable carbon and oxygen isotope compositions of co-occurring plant species reflect their different water use strategies and indicate the importance of screening species' WUE i to plan climate change adaptation strategies. Abstract The different abilities of plant species to cope with drought have been associated with stru...

The production of bioenergy in Europe is one of the strategies conceived to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The suitability of the land use change from a cropland (REF site) to a short rotation coppice plantation of hybrid poplar (SRC site) was investigated by comparing the GHG budgets of these two systems over 24 months in Viterbo, Italy. E...

It is still unclear whether the exponential rise of atmospheric CO 2 concentration has produced a fertilization effect on tropical forests, thus incrementing their growth rate, in the last two centuries. As many factors affect tree growth patterns, short-term studies might be influenced by the confounding effect of several interacting environmental...

It is still unclear whether the exponential rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration has produced a fertilization effect on tropical forests, thus incrementing their growth rate, in the last two centuries. As many factors affect tree growth patterns, short -term studies might be influenced by the confounding effect of several interacting environmental...

Tropical deforestation is well known to have serious negative consequences for biodiversity, terrestrial carbon sinks and the balance of atmospheric greenhouse gases. By contrast, selective logging of tropical forests is often regarded as having a lesser impact on the ecosystem particularly in long terms, even though there have been few critical ev...

The selective inhibition technique by specific antibiotics (streptomycin, cycloheximide) applied to substrate-induced respiration (SIR) measurement was used to test the relative contribution of fungi to bacteria (F/B ratio) to the overall microflora-induced activity in soils of European Russia. Investigated soils covered a wide climatic transect an...

African tropical forests of the equatorial belt might receive significant input of extra nitrogen derived from biomass burning occurring in the north savanna belt and transported equatorward by northeastern winds. In order to test this hypothesis an experiment was set up in a tropical rain forest in the Ankasa Game Reserve and Nini-Suhien National...

This paper, developed under the framework of the RECCAP initiative, aims at providing improved estimates of the carbon and GHG (CO2, CH4 and N2O) balance of continental Africa. The various components and processes of the African carbon and GHG budget are considered, existing data reviewed, and new data from different methodologies (inventories, eco...

Biochar is known to enhance soil fertility and C sequestration, but relatively little information is currently available about its effect on soil microbial community, a component of terrestrial ecosystems that plays a key role in nutrient cycling. This study tested the effects of soil amendment with two loads of woodderived biochar (30 and 60 t ha�...

Methane is an important greenhouse gas, responsible for about 20% of the warming induced by long-lived greenhouse gases since pre-industrial times. By reacting with hydroxyl radicals, methane reduces the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere and generates ozone in the troposphere. Although most sources and sinks of methane have been identified, thei...

The use of micrometeorological (MM) techniques for methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) flux measurements in terrestrial ecosystems is increasing and a general outline which summarises key results is needed. This work provides an overview of the current status of global flux measurements of CH4 and N2O by MM techniques in terrestrial ecosystems. P...

Abstract African tropical forests of the equatorial belt might receive significant input of extra nitrogen derived from biomass burning occurring in the north savanna belt and transported equator wards by NE winds. In order to test this hypothesis an experiment was 5 set up in a tropical rain forest in the National park of Ankasa (Ghana) aiming at:...

European policy makers are promoting the cultivation of energy crops by providing subsidies to farmers for lands’ conversion from traditional cultivations, aiming to significantly reduce Green House Gases (GHGs) emissions and global warming. Nonetheless the Land Use Change (LUC) and the crops management require a set of operations causing again GHG...

Most recently atmospheric studies have evidenced the imprint of large N2O sources in tropical/subtropical lands. This source might be attributed to agricultural areas as well as to natural humid ecosystems. The uncertainty related to both sources is very high, due to the paucity of data and small frequency of sampling in tropical studies. This is p...

At present times one of the fastest spreading renewable energy sources are bioenergy cultivations. Millions of hectares of traditional crops all over the Europe are expected to be converted in energy crops in the near future, in order to produce green energy and stock more quantity of Carbon. Last year, in the context of the GHG-Europe FP7 project...

This paper, developed under the framework of the RECCAP initiative, aims at providing improved estimates of the carbon and GHG (CO2, CH4 and N2O) balance of continental Africa. The various components and processes of the African carbon and GHG budget were considered, and new and available data derived by different methodologies (based on inventorie...

Nitrous oxide emissions from a network of agricultural experiments in Europe were used to explore the relative importance of site and management controls of emissions. At each site, a selection of management interventions were compared within replicated experimental designs in plot-based experiments. Arable experiments were conducted at Beano in It...

At global level, tropics represent the strongest biogenic source of N2O and CH4, with natural ecosystems having a comparable or even dominant role, in terms of source strength, respect to agro-ecosystems. The uncertainty related to both sources is very high, due to the paucity of data and small frequency of sampling in tropical studies. We present...

At present one of the fastest spreading renewable energy sources are bioenergy cultivations. Millions of hectares of traditional crops all over the Europe are expected to be converted in energy crops in the near future, in order to produce green energy and contrast global warming. Last year, in the context of the GHG-Europe FP7 project we set up an...

Wetlands have a great impact on atmospheric methane (CH4) pool, sometimes balancing a large part of positive benefits of carbon sequestration in soils and plants in terms of climate forcing. Since micrometeorological techniques have emerged as a tool for measuring trace gas exchange between the biosphere and atmosphere, experiments on these ecosyst...