Anthropic pressures on Nature 2000 Sites: recommendations and monitoring criteria for the pollution emergency response activities within the Orbetello lagoon

L’elevato valore naturalistico e socioeconomico di un Sito Natura 2000 richiede che tutte le attività antropiche che si svolgono al suo interno (es. pesca, turismo, trasporti, attività industriali, etc.) siano gestite in maniera tale da non pregiudicare le specie e gli habitat per i quali l’area è stata designata. Molti di questi Siti sono ambienti di transizione, ovvero zone che costituiscono il passaggio naturale tra terra e mare. La loro posizione di interfaccia tra questi due ambienti li rende ecosistemi unici e biologicamente molto produttivi, sede di meccanismi di regolazione dei processi interattivi della biosfera nelle due fasi, terrestre e marina. In alcuni Siti la presenza di attività antropiche diffuse e prolungate nel tempo ha portato al riscontro di stati di contaminazione elevata, fino all’inclusione di queste zone, o parti di esse, tra i Siti di bonifica di Interesse Nazionale (SIN). Il presente lavoro descrive le linee di indirizzo e le attività di monitoraggio da attuare per la salvaguardia della salute pubblica e dell’ambiente nel corso degli interventi di messa in sicurezza di emergenza predisposti nell’area lagunare antistante l’area industriale Ex Sitoco, all’interno della perimetrazione del SIN di Orbetello, incluso in un Sito di Importanza Comunitaria. Le matrici ambientali potenzialmente a rischio a causa dell’esecuzione di tali interventi sono: acqua, sedimento, biocenosi acquatiche, avifauna, uomo. È altresì importante valutare gli effetti che le ipotetiche modifiche su microscala, apportate a livello di ogni matrice, potrebbero causare nel lungo periodo su macroscala.The high naturalistic and socio-economic value of Natura 2000 sites requires that all human activities performed within their borders (e.g. fishing, tourism, transports, industrial activities) are regulated. Indeed, the site management should assure the effective safeguard of all species and habitats of European interest included in the protected area. A lot of such sites are located in transitional environments, that are areas characterised by a natural progression from the terrestrial to the water environments. Such environments include unique and very productive habitats, and they represent the regulation mechanisms of the interactive processes of the terrestrial and marine biosphere. In some sites, the presence of human activities that are distributed both in space and time has led to high levels of contamination, that in some cases even required their inclusion in Reclamation Sites of National Interest (SIN). The present study describes the planning and monitoring activities to be performed in order to safeguard human and environment health during the actions of MISE in the lagoonal area in front of the industrial area Ex Sitoco, within the borders of the Orbetello SIN, included in a SCI. The environmental parameters that are potentially at risk due to such activities are: water, sediment, water biocenosis, birds, humans. Furthermore, it is important to evaluate the effects that potential variations at the microscale level may cause at the macroscale level

Chemical-physical and ecological characterisation in the environmental project of a polluted coastal area: the Bagnoli case study

The Bagnoli Bay (southern Tyrrhenian Sea, Naples, Italy) has been impacted for about one century by heavy anthropogenic pollution due to an important steel plant. A multidisciplinary environmental research, aimed at the reclamation of the marine contaminated area, was planned in order to evaluate, through quantitative data, the chemical-physical and ecological characteristics of marine sediments; the latter ones are strictly related to the composition and structure of benthic foraminiferal assemblages. A comprehensive statistical approach, considering all data, was attempted in order to single out the influence of pollutants on the single species distribution. The results show strong heavy metal pollution (Fe, Mn, Pb and Zn) in the vicinity of the industrial plant. Many foraminiferal species (Haynesina germanica, Miliolinella subrotunda,Quinqueloculina parvula), have a good tolerance to some trace metals while, Bulimina sublimbata, Elphidiummacellum and Miliolinella dilatata show a good tolerance to PAHs pollution

From 3,4-dinitrothiophene to nitrocyclopropanes and 1,1'-dinitro-1,1'-bi(cyclopropyl) compounds

Treatment of (E,E)-1,4-diaryl-2,3-dinitro-1,3-butadienes (I) with diazomethane in Et2O or THF represents a facile and high-yielding route to 2,2'-diaryl-1,1'-dinitro-1,1'-bi(cyclopropyl)s. The process exclusively produces diastereomeric mixts. of a chiral d,l pair and a meso form, the relative percentages of which depend on the aryl moiety, consistently with a concerted syn-stereoselective cyclopropanation of each double bond. With 1 mol-equiv of CH2N2, the cyclopropanation can effectively be limited to one double bond of the starting dinitrobutadiene, thus allowing a synthetically useful differentiation between the two originally conjugated nitrovinyl moieties. As verified with model derivs., the resulting vinylcyclopropanes can be cyclopropanated with excess diazomethane to give the same diastereomeric mixts. as obtained by direct bis(cyclopropanation) of I

Generalised Factorial Moments and QCD Jets

{ In this paper we present a natural and comprehensive generalisation of the standard factorial moments (\clFq) analysis of a multiplicity distribution. The Generalised Factorial Moments are defined for all $q$ in the complex plane and, as far as the negative part of its spectrum is concerned, could be useful for the study of infrared structure of the Strong Interactions Theory of high energy interactions (LEP multiplicity distribution under the ${\cal Z}_0$). The QCD calculation of the Generalised Factorial Moments for negative $q$ is performed in the double leading log accuracy and is compared to OPAL experimental data. The role played by the infrared cut-off of the model is discussed and illustrated with a Monte Carlo calculation. }Comment: 11pages 4 figures uuencode, LATEC, INLN 94/

Balance between the reliability of classification and sampling effort: A multi-approach for thewater Framework Directive (WFD) ecological status applied to the Venice Lagoon (Italy)

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires Member States to assess the ecological status of water bodies and provide an estimation of the classification confidence and precision. This study tackles the issue of the uncertainty in the classification, due to the spatial variability within each water body, proposing an analysis of the reliability of classification, using the results of macrophyte WFD monitoring in the Venice Lagoon as case study. The level of classification confidence, assessed for each water body, was also used as reference to optimize the sampling effort for the subsequent monitorings. The ecological status of macrophytes was calculated by the Macrophyte Quality Index at 114 stations located in 11 water bodies. At water body scale, the level of classification confidence ranges from 54% to 100%. After application of the multi-approach (inferential statistics, spatial analyses, and expert judgment), the optimization of the sampling effort resulted in a reduction of the number of stations from 114 to 84. The decrease of sampling effort was validated by assessing the reliability of classification after the optimization process (54-99%) and by spatial interpolation of data (Kernel standard error of 22.75%). The multi-approach proposed in this study could be easily applied to any other water body and biological quality element