The next international workshop “Metrology for the Sea” will be held in Portorož, Slovenia, from 14 to 16 October 2024. Among the most anticipated events, Special Session #8 will be dedicated to “Methodologies and ecological indicators for the monitoring of anthropogenic impacts in transitional waters and marine ecosystems”.
For more information and to register, visit the official IEEE MetroSea 2024 website.
On Wednesday 3 April, the “Hic Sunt Lupi” project held its first public meeting “The return of the wolf in Salento: let’s get to know it” in Lecce, Italy.
The meeting was opened by the Councilor for Environment of Regione Puglia, Anna Grazia Maraschio, the Mayor of Lecce, Carlo Salvemini and hosted representatives of the experts involved in the project, like Paolo Ciucci, Professor at Sapienza-University of Rome, and Francesco Cozzoli and Francesco De Leo, researchers at the National Research Council (CNR-IRET), Lecce, and Ruben Cataldo, archaeologist and President of Archeo-Rec.
This was the first of a series of meetings foreseen within the project to involve the local population, not only on the objectives of the project, which has started monitoring and gathering data on the presence of wolves in Salento to get to a better understanding of the situation and pave the road towards management measures. The wolf is a protected species and its return in Salento is a fact of scientific and ecological relevance, however it is also an issue with such a strong impact on local communities for a variety of reasons (security, economical, etc.). Many are the concerns linked to the return of this predator which sometimes lead to the development of “fake-news”, like the erroneous idea that it was deliberately reintroduced in various areas, just to make an example. Disseminating science-knowledge information and facts on the wolves, their return in this specific area and their management is a critical aspect for the success of the project. “Hic Sunt Lupi” is investing to achieve a true engagement of the local population, also thanks to initiatives of citizen science, where data coming from people’s observations will be collected, validated and hosted on the LifeWatch Italy Citizen Science platform.
Hic Sunt Lupi is a project of Regione Puglia, CNR-IRET, and the Sapienza University of Rome, with the support of LifeWatch Italy, the National Biodiversity Future Center and the University of Salento.
The Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, ISPRA, in collaboration with the Department of Engineering and Geology of the “G. d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara and the Department of Earth Sciences of Sapienza, University of Rome, are organizing the 5th Summer School of Geomorphology, Ecology, and Biology in marine and insular environments – Asinara Island, 9-14 September 2024, under the patronage of the Italian Geological Society and its Marine Geology Section, the Italian Association of Geomorphology (AIGEO), the Asinara National Park, the “Asinara Island” Marine Protected Area, and the Municipality of Porto Torres.
The summer school on “Geomorphology, Ecology, and Biology in marine and insular environments” aims to provide training and scientific updating for university students, doctoral students, researchers, and technicians working in the marine environmental field.
Deadline for registration: March 13, 2024.
Further information and the full program are available on the ISPRA website.
On 10 and 11 April 2024, the Symposium ‘Biodiversity Change in the Anthropocene’ will be held at the Fano Marine Centre. The symposium is open to all experts dealing with biodiversity in Italy, both terrestrial and aquatic.
The symposium will be divided into three sessions:
In addition, there will be a session dedicated to PhD students funded and co-funded by the CNR.
The symposium is organised by the CNR Biodiversity Working Group and CNR-IRBIM Ancona in collaboration with the Fano Marine Center, LifeWatch Italia and the National Biodiversity Future Center.
Registration is free for all participants. To complete registration, a one-page abstract in English must be submitted by 10 February 2024 to submissions@irbim.cnr.it.
All information is available at https://registrazioneeventi.cnr.it/event/31/
Yesterday, 19 December 2022, the kick-off meeting of ITINERIS, the Italian Integrated Environmental Research Infrastructures System, was held in Rome. The project, funded with €155 million from the PNRR and coordinated by the CNR (the Italian National Research Centre), involves 22 European and Italian research infrastructures.
Gelsomina Pappalardo, CNR researcher and Italian delegate at the ESFRI Forum, who chaired the event, highlighted that: “this is a unique project of its kind, even if it has a formal duration of 30 months, it will change the future of Research Infrastructures in Italy with an impact on research for at least the next ten years”. The project aims to establish an Italian hub for accessing data, services and facilities for interdisciplinary study in the four environmental domains: atmosphere, marine, terrestrial biosphere and geosphere.
Work Package 2 of the project, presented by Carmela Cornacchia (CNR-IMAA Potenza) in collaboration with Ilaria Rosati (CNR-IRET Lecce and LifeWatch Italy) is in fact dedicated to “access”. Access to research infrastructures refers to the regulated use of research infrastructures, and to the services offered by them, be it physical, remote, or virtual access – as in the case of data and digital services. With WP2, ITINERIS aims to ensure the FAIRness of the access as well (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reproducible). The challenge is to coordinate the 22 infrastructures towards alignment with the requirements set by the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
WP3, coordinated by Alberto Basset, Director of the LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre and Manager of the LifeWatch Italy Joint Research Unit (JRU), will take care of training internal staff and future users of the infrastructures. More than 60 training courses are foreseen for the next 30 months.
After the presentation of WP4, 5, 6 and 7 dedicated to the four domains, each with the development of specific case studies, Antonello Provenzale, CNR-IGG and Coordinator of the LifeWatch Italy JRU, presented WP8. This WP will develop the Virtual Research Environments for data analysis and modelling of future scenarios in ITINERIS’ domains of interest. “Having a central hub that functions as a gateway for users to the infrastructures” said Provenzale, “will make us an example at a European level”.