Veronica Nava

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca | UNIMIB · Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

A variety of organisms can colonize microplastic surfaces through biofouling processes. Heterotrophic bacteria tend to be the focus of plastisphere research; however, the presence of epiplastic microalgae within the biofilm has been repeatedly documented. Despite the relevance of biofouling in determining the fate and effects of microplastics in aq...

Raman spectroscopy is gaining ground in the analysis of microplastics, especially due to its high spatial resolution that allows the investigation of small plastic particles, whose numeric abundance is argued to be particularly relevant in aquatic systems. Here, we aimed at outlining the status of Raman analysis of microplastics from aquatic system...

With the widespread occurrence of microplastics in aquatic ecosystems having been firmly established, the focus of research has shifted towards the assessments of their influence on ecosystem functions and food webs. This includes interactions between microplastics and microalgae, as fundamental components at the base of aquatic food webs and pivot...

Recent studies have highlighted an increase of chloride in many lakes worldwide, with negative effects on chemical and physical properties of inland waters and freshwater biota. In this study, we assessed the long‐term trend (1993–2017) of chloride in Lake Iseo, located in the midlatitudes, and analyzed its relationship with discharge data of the i...

The load quantification of solutes and suspended materials in rivers provides meaningful ecological information about watershed functionality. High-frequency measurements of flow are often available, whereas concentration data are commonly recorded at low frequencies. Different calculation methods have been developed by various authors to provide u...

Phytoplankton is an essential resource in aquatic ecosystems, situated at the base of aquatic food webs. Plastic pollution can impact these organisms, potentially affecting the functioning of aquatic ecosystems. The interaction between plastics and phytoplankton is multifaceted: while microplastics can exert toxic effects on phytoplankton, plastics...

Anthropogenic litter, such as plastic, is investigated by the global scientific community from various fields employing diverse techniques. The goal is to assess and finally mitigate the pollutants' impacts on the natural environment. Plastic litter can accumulate in different matrices of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, impacting both biota and...

Wastewater discharge from wastewater treatment plants continuously pumps microplastics into rivers, yet their transport distances within these waterways remain unknown. Herein, we developed a conceptual framework by synthesizing the microplastic data from the Yangtze River Basin to evaluate its transport distances, quantifying a signiffcant spatial...

The presence of plastics in freshwater ecosystems is now widely recognized, with substantial variations in concentrations and types. A growing body of literature acknowledges that plastics can serve as a substrate for biofilm growth, facilitating the colonization of diverse organisms and thus creating what is known as the 'plastisphere'. Within thi...

Lakes are a fundamental resource, serving as crucial water reservoirs, supporting biodiversity, and impacting atmospheric dynamics through greenhouse gas emissions. Despite their importance, current research often overlooks fine-scale spatial variations in water quality and gas emissions. Our project aims to address this gap by employing advanced t...

Zooplankton communities are the primary conduit of energy from phytoplankton to planktivorous fish in freshwater ecosystems and play key roles in the functioning of these systems. Therefore, they are often proposed as ecological indicators. However, most zooplankton research focuses on a single waterbody or region, and insights from such studies ma...

Permanent ponds are valuable freshwater systems and biodiversity hotspots. They provide diverse ecosystem services (ES), including water quality improvement and supply, food provisioning and biodiversity support. Aquatic subsidies provide a high nutritional quality, energy density and nutrient concentration. Among those, emerging insects are rich i...

Plastics in aquatic ecosystems rapidly undergo biofouling, giving rise to a new ecosystem on their surface, the 'plastisphere.' Few studies quantify the impact of plastics and their associated community on ecosystem traits from biodiversity and functional traits to metabolic function. It has been suspected that impacts on ecosystems may depend on i...

Cyanobacterial blooms present substantial challenges to managers and threaten ecological and public health. Although the majority of cyanobacterial bloom research and management focuses on factors that control bloom initiation, duration, toxicity, and geographical extent, relatively little research focuses on the role of loss processes in blooms an...

Climate change and increasing nutrient concentrations are two major threats to lake ecosystems. Furthermore, warming is exacerbating the symptoms of eutrophication in freshwaters. Facing both environmental challenges simultaneously is more urgent than ever to preserve and recover water quality and protect the remaining biodiversity. Here, we used l...

Plastic debris is thought to be widespread in freshwater ecosystems globally¹. However, a lack of comprehensive and comparable data makes rigorous assessment of its distribution challenging2,3. Here we present a standardized cross-national survey that assesses the abundance and type of plastic debris (>250 μm) in freshwater ecosystems. We sample su...

Body size is a key functional trait that affects many physiological and ecological processes. Among ectotherms, body size patterns are strongly influenced by temperature variation (temperature-size rule). Consequently, climate change is likely to alter body size patterns affecting ecosystem function, particularly in size-structured aquatic communit...

Global urbanization trends have led to the widespread increasing occurrence of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products, pesticides, and micro- and nano-plastics in aquatic systems. Even at low concentrations, these contaminants pose a threat to aquatic ecosystems. To better understand the effects of C...

Permanent ponds are valuable freshwater systems and biodiversity hotspots. They provide diverse ecosystem services (ES), including water quality improvement and supply, food provisioning and biodiversity support. This is despite being under significant pressure from multiple anthropogenic stressors and the impacts of ongoing global change. However,...

Permanent ponds represent important habitats for aquatic biodiversity and provide vital ecosystem services as key elements for blue landscape connectivity. Although mostly neglected in management programmes, protection schemes and biodiversity studies in general, ponds constitute habitats with high α- and spatial β-diversity, providing unique habit...

Ponds, whilst being mostly neglected in management and protection plans, can constitute habitats with high α- and β-diversity, including many rare and endemic species. In heterogeneous landscapes, ponds can also contribute to habitat connectivity and enhance γ-diversity whilst delivering many ecosystem services. Semi-aquatic insects are one of the...

Whilst being small and shallow, permanent ponds provide valuable habitats for a multitude of organisms as well as provide habitats for animals like aquatic insects and others, including many rare species. These ponds, which were often neglected in limnological studies, were the core of our joint project, the 3rd freshwater project - EUROPONDS in or...

The significant increase in urbanization has resulted in greater use of the subsurface in urban planning and, therefore, increased interaction between groundwater and underground infrastructure. Numerical models are the primary tool adopted to manage the resulting problems; however, their construction is time- and cost-consuming. Groundwater-level...

The spatial and temporal variability of dissolved trace elements (Al, As, Ba, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Li, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb, Sb, Sr, Ti, U, V and Zn) in the upper and middle reaches of the Sava River during two campaigns (2007/2008 and 2017/2018) was examined. The study also included important tributaries and wastewater effluents. No crucial change in met...

The separation of microplastics from environmental matrices is still challenging, especially for sediments where microplastics can accumulate affecting benthic organisms. Many authors have adopted different procedures, but their effectiveness has been rarely compared. The present study aims to compare the recovery rate of three different methodolog...

Within the EUROPONDS project we looked into the contribution of aquatic invertebrates to terrestrial ecosystems, which are globally declining, in various countries all over Europe. Our study encompassed a restored quarry in Alpedrete, Madrid, Spain, a landscape destined for livestock activities. We hypothesized that the emergence during autumn and...

In big lakes with strong anthropogenic pressure, it is usually difficult to disentangle the impacts of climate variability from those driven by eutrophication. The present work aimed at the reconstruction of change in the species distribution and density of subfossil Cladocera in Lake Iseo (Italy) in relation to climate and anthropogenic pressure....

Although freshwater is a vital resource for domestic and productive purposes, it is a very limited and vulnerable resource on atoll islands. Besides precipitations, on coral atolls groundwater is the only source of fresh water, usually extending below sea level in the form of a thin fresh water lens. Several possible environmental hazard can affect...

Freshwaters constitute a fundamental and extremely limited resource for atoll islands’ population. The interplay of climatic and human-driven processes, which affect both the quantity and the quality of freshwater resources, may exacerbate the problem of water security and availability. This work evaluated the effects of good spectrum of anthropic...

This poster was a contribution by Juan Rubio-Ríos and Encarnación Fenoy from EUROPONDS project to the online Symposium about "Researches in Experimental Sciences" ("IX Simposio de Investigación en Ciencias Experimentales") from University of Almería in Spain.

Understanding the factors that control As concentrations in groundwater is vital for supplying safe groundwater in regions with As-polluted aquifers. Despite much research, mainly addressing Holocene aquifers hosting young (<100 yrs) groundwater, the source, transport, and fate of As in Pleistocene aquifers with fossil (>12,000 yrs) groundwaters ar...

Large lakes of the world are habitats for diverse species, including endemic taxa, and are valuable resources that provide humanity with many ecosystem services. They are also sentinels of global and local change, and recent studies in limnology and paleolimnology have demonstrated disturbing evidence of their collective degradation in terms of dep...

We review the state of the art of limnological studies in Lake Iseo and provide updated data concerning long-term investigations (from 1993 to 2018) carried out on chemical and physical parameters (e.g., oxygen, phosphorus, silicon). Changes observed in Lake Iseo were compared with those reported in other Deep South alpine Lakes (DSLs) to highlight...

In the Po Plain of northern Italy, one of the larger alluvial basin in Europe, groundwater quality is threatened by nitrate pollution. The main aim of this work is to assess the origin of this pollution and understand how groundwater/surface-water interactions affect nitrate concentrations in the region. The study area is part of the Oglio River ba...

In this study, sources of groundwater pollution in a landfill site were identified, using artificial sweeteners as chemical tracers, multivariate statistical analysis and a quantitative analysis of the groundwater flow system through particle tracking and transport modeling. The study area, located in northern Italy, hosts an older unlined landfill...

Implements several of the most popular load estimation procedures, including averaging methods, ratio estimators and regression methods. The package provides an easy-touse tool to rapidly calculate the load for various compounds and to compare different methods. The package also supplies additional functions to easily organize and analyze the data.

For several hundred years, farming in the Po Plain of Italy (46,000 km², 20 million inhabitants) has been supported by intensive surface irrigation with lake and river water. Despite the longevity of irrigation, its effects on the quality and quantity of groundwater is poorly known and so is investigated here through seasonal measurements of hydrau...

Multivariate statistical analysis is a useful method for supporting the interpretation of experimental data, particularly in the case of large datasets. In the present study, cluster analysis and factor analysis are used to support the hydrochemical characterization of groundwater and surface water in an area located in the Oglio River basin (N Ita...

Catchment area changes (e.g. river hydrology, nutrient loads, land use), driven by climatic variation or anthropic activities, can have a strong impact on lake ecosystems. In particular, extreme flood events can bring a lot of sediment in lake basin affecting physical and chemical water features, biocoenoses and food webs. In previous studies, it h...

Catchment area changes (e.g. river hydrology, nutrient loads, land use), driven by climatic variation or anthropic activities, can have a strong impact on lake ecosystems. In particular extreme flood events can bring a lot of material in lake basin affecting water transparency and consequently impacting on the biocenosis. In previous studies has be...

From 2014 huge biomasses of an allochthonous and harmful Cyanobacteria, Tychonema bourrellyi,have been detected in Lake Iseo, in which the predominant species in the cyanobacterial taxa was Planktothrix rubescens. Many studies have linked the development of allochthonous Cyanobacteria populations with climate change; however, the causes of this new...

Achieving a better understanding of the role of climate change in altering population phenology, seasonal cycles in freshwater organisms, and ecosystem structure and function is of high scientific and economic value. The present paper has demonstrated the different food-web responses to teleconnection indices, which are proxy of climate fluctuation...

Ammonia is a widespread pollutant in aquatic ecosystems originating directly and indirectly from human activities, which can strongly affect the structure and functioning of the aquatic foodweb. The biological oxidation of NH4 + to nitrite, and then nitrate is a key part of the complex nitrogen cycle and a fundamental process in aquatic environment...

In Lake Iseo (Lombardia, Italy), the predominant species in the cyanobacterial taxa was Planktothrix rubescens. However, since 2014, the presence of an allochthonous Cyanobacteria, Tychonema bourrellyi, able to produce consistent biomasses and harmful toxins, was detected. The causes of this expansion are poorly understood. Many studies have linked...