First overview on the 4th Annex I Habitats Report in Italy: methods, criticality, results and future prospects

Like all the other EU/28 countries, in 2019 Italy developed the 4th Italian Report ex-Art. 17 on the conservation status of the Habitats of Annex I to the 92/43/EEC Directive. Institutional referent of the process, on behalf of the Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea Protection (MATTM), was the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) with the scientific support of the Italian Botanical Society (SBI). A huge working group composed of thematic and territorial experts was formed with the task to collect, analyse, validate the data resulting from Annex I Habitat monitoring in Italy for the period 2013-2018, whose collection is in charge to the regional administrations. Data on 124 types of terrestrial and inland water Habitats present in Italy have been processed in order to assess their overall conservation status in the Biogeographic Regions of occurrence. The carried out activity led to the compilation of 278 assessment sheets. The work included a critical analysis of the data and a broad scientific confrontation aimed at finding methodologically robust solutions to fill the gaps. The work was structured so as to guarantee the traceability of the information and to allow the collection of "gray" literature and scientific articles, phytosociological surveys and unpublished material of the specialists, composing a substantial pool of data useful for starting a long-term process to support the next reporting cycles. Cartographic outcomes, associated databases and additional data used for the assessments will be available online on the ISPRA Portal as soon as the validation process by the European Commission will be completed. A freely accessible online archive of phytosociological surveys representative of the various Annex I Habitats in Italy is being set up within the national "VegItaly" database, managed by the Italian Society of Vegetation Science, by way of a dedicated archive named "HAB_IT". Such a long-term vision, oriented to the storage and enhancement of knowledge, represents an important innovative aspect and a significant progress towards the construction of an effective monitoring system for the conservation of Annex I Habitats in Italy

Il supporto della SISV alla realizzazione di un manuale nazionale per il monitoraggio degli habitat della Direttiva 92/43/EEC in Italia.

A partire dall'entrata in vigore della Direttiva 92/43/EEC, la sorveglianza dello stato di conservazione degli habitat elencati nell'Allegato I ed il relativo monitoraggio periodico a intervalli di sei anni sono diventati un obbligo per tutti i paesi membri dell'UE, in base a quanto previsto negli Articoli 11 e 17. Nel 2011 è stato pubblicato un documento che fornisce le linee guida di riferimento europee per il monitoraggio di habitat e specie (Evans & Arvela 2011). Su questa base metodologica, la Società Italiana di Scienza della Vegetazione (SISV), avvalendosi di un ampio gruppo di soci esperti, ha avviato un dibattito interno su principi, criteri, parametri e strumenti per il monitoraggio degli habitat di Allegato I e dei tipi di vegetazione in essi rappresentati. Il progetto è stato promosso dal Ministero dell'Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare e coordinato dall'Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale, e si trova al momento in una fase prossima alla conclusione. A partire dalla documentazione già prodotta a livello nazionale per gli habitat italiani (Biondi et al., 2009, 2012, 2014; Genovesi et al., 2014), diversi aspetti critici sono stati esaminati attraverso una discussione scientifica ampiamente condivisa. In particolare, sono stati affrontati: gli aspetti legati alla scelta di strumenti adeguati per valutare i parametri area, struttura e funzione, prospettive future; il concetto di "specie tipica"; i metodi di campionamento habitat-specifici appropriati. Il protocollo sviluppato si pone come uno strumento pratico ed efficace, scientificamente valido e in linea con gli standard metodologici internazionali. Il suo utilizzo permetterà una raccolta armonizzata di dati su scala nazionale, rendendo possibile una valutazione comparata dello stato di conservazione di ciascun habitat

The Ne-O2 potential energy surface from high-resolution diffraction and glory scattering experiments and from the Zeeman spectrum

Contains fulltext : 6966.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Reaction Dynamics of O(3P) + Propyne: I. Primary Products, Branching Ratios, and Role of Intersystem Crossing from Crossed Molecular Beam Experiments

We performed synergic experimental/theoretical studies on the mechanism of the O(3P) + propyne reaction by combining crossed molecular beams experiments with mass-spectrometric detection and time-of-flight analysis at 9.2 kcal/mol collision energy (Ec) with ab initio electronic structure calculations at a high level of theory of the relevant triplet and singlet potential energy surfaces (PESs) and statistical calculations of branching ratios (BRs) taking into account intersystem crossing (ISC). In this paper (I) we report the results of the experimental investigation, while the accompanying paper (II) shows results of the theoretical investigation with comparison to experimental results. By exploiting soft electron ionization detection to suppress/mitigate the effects of the dissociative ionization of reactants, products, and background gases, product angular and velocity distributions at different charge-to-mass ratios were measured. From the laboratory data angular and translational energy distributions in the center-of-mass system were obtained for the five competing most important product channels, and product BRs were derived. The reactive interaction of O(3P) with propyne under single collision conditions is mainly leading to the rupture of the three-carbon atom chain, with production of the radical products methylketenyl + atomic hydrogen (BR = 0.04), methyl + ketenyl (BR = 0.10), and vinyl + formyl (BR = 0.11) and the molecular products ethylidene/ethylene + carbon monoxide (BR = 0.74) and propandienal + molecular hydrogen (BR = 0.01). Because some of the products can only be formed via ISC from the entrance triplet to the low-lying singlet PES, we infer from their BRs an amount of ISC larger than 80%. This value is dramatically large when compared to the negligible ISC reported for the O(3P) reaction with the simplest alkyne, acetylene. At the same time, it is much larger than that (∼20%) recently observed in the related reaction of the three-carbon atom alkene, O(3P) + propene at a comparable Ec. This poses the question of how important it is to consider nonadiabatic effects and their dependence on molecular structure for this kind of combustion reactions. The prevalence of the CH3 over the H displacement channels is not explained by invoking a preference for the addition on the methyl-substituted acetylenic carbon atom, but rather it is believed to be due to the different tendencies of the two addition triplet intermediates CH3CCHO (preferentially leading to H elimination) and CH3COCH (preferentially leading to CH3 elimination) to undergo ISC to the underlying singlet PES. It is concluded that the main coproduct of the CO forming channel is singlet ethylidene (1CH3CH) rather than ground-state ethylene. By comparing the derived BRs with those very recently derived from kinetics studies at room temperature and 4 Torr we obtained information on how BRs vary with collision energy. The extent of ISC is estimated to remain essentially constant (∼85%) with increasing Ec from ∼1 to ∼10 kcal/mol. The present experimental results shed light on the mechanism of the title reaction at energies comparable to those involved in combustion and, when compared with the results from the statistical calculations on the ab initio coupled PESs (see accompanying paper II), lead to an in-depth understanding of the rather complex reaction mechanism of O + propyne. The overall results are expected to contribute to the development of more refined models of hydrocarbon combustion

Model rainfall-runoff in the constraints Amazon.

The development of a hydrological model in Amazon region has been a challenge for researchers since historical series of hydrological data in the Amazon region are still insufficient. The aim of this study was based on different samples of settings for calibration and validation of IPH II model, using limited historical series of data of daily average water flow registered in Caiabi river hydrologic basin, a tributary stream of Teles Pires river- Mato Grosso. The total area of the study location is 440.98 km2, and there were installed three meteorological automatic stations for climate monitoring, and one linigraph in the basin end for monitoring the altimetric quotas and also to estimate the daily water flow of the river. The precipitation data, evapotranspiration and water flow used to feed the IPH II model were collected between 09/18/2015 and 04/30/2016, using sixty percent of the initial historical data to calibrate and forty percent to validate the model has shown better statistic performance, however rearranging the data and establishing the sixty percent of the central data for the calibration was verified that there was an increase in the statistical performance of the model making the simulations of the IPH II model were successful. It was indicated by the results that the sample methodology for calibration of hydrologic models can bring substantial improvement to the performance