Monitoring of coastal dunes habitats in Tuscany through the “MONITO-RARE” project

“MONITO-RARE” is a project involving Tuscany Region and Universities of Firenze, Siena and Pisa, aimed to improve the knowledge and develop monitoring methodologies for species and habitats included in Natura 2000 Network and considered of community interest, according to Art. 11 and Art. 17 of the Directive 92/43/EEC. Among the habitat of interest (Annex I), coastal sand dune is one of the most threatened by multiple human pressures (1, 2), such as pollution, coastal erosion, effects of global warming, farming practices, urban development, and pressure from tourism (3). As part of this project, was carried out a first year of monitoring of dunal habitats (Natura 200 code 2110, 2120, 2210, 2230, 2240, 2250* and 2260) in five SACs (Special Areas of Conservation) in order to cover different latitudes of Tuscany coast (“Dune litoranee di Torre del Lago/Selva Pisana”, “Tombolo da Castiglion della Pescaia a Marina di Grosseto”, “Dune costiere del Parco dell’Uccellina” and “Duna del Lago di Burano”). The coastal areas to the north and south of Arno basin are very different by climatic, geomorphologic (erosion) and anthropic factors. The northern coast is twice rainy as the southern one. Nevertheless, sand dune habitats are distributed in a fine scale mosaic, not distinguishable through aerial photos and maps. For this reason, we opted for a stratified sampling in three EUNIS habitat types (B1.3, shifting coastal dunes; B1.4, coastal stable dune grassland; B1.6, coastal dune scrub) for psammophilous vegetation. According to Sperandii et al. (4), we recorded these communities by 262 random plots of 2 x 2 m surface in which were surveyed pressures and threats, floristic composition and an estimate of abundance using a percentage cover scale ranging from 1 to 10. Our sampling is congruent with RanVegDunes (GIVD ID EU-IT-020), the first Italian database gathering standardized, randomly-sampled vegetation data in coastal dune environments. We detected significative differences in abundance and species composition between EUNIS habitat types, between SACs, and between habitat types within SACs. In particular, our data shows particular differences between communities of north and south of Tuscany: the northern SACs to Serchio river are heavily impacted by the presence of mass tourism, with bathing establishments, roads and human trampling. From these evidences can be deduced that trails installed within the DUNETOSCA Life Projects and aimed to reduction of tourism impact may be insufficient to reduce anthropic pressures in those contexts and adequate conservation strategies are required. 1) EEA (1999) State and pressures of the marine and coastal Mediterranean Environment. Environmental Issues Series, No. 5, European Environment Agency, Copenhagen 2) Barcelona Convention, Athens (2012) UNEP/MAP 2012. State of the Mediterranean Marine and Coastal Environment https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/364/sommcer_eng.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y 3) Ciccarelli D. (2014) Environmental Management 54, 194–204 4) Sperandii M.G., Prisco I., Stanisci A., Acosta A.T.R. (2017) Phytocoenologia 47, 231–23

Enough Is Enough? Searching for the Optimal Sample Size to Monitor European Habitats: A Case Study from Coastal Sand Dunes

A robust survey method that samples the main characteristics of plant assemblages is needed to assess the conservation status of European habitat in the Natura 2000 network. A measure of variability, called pseudo-multivariate dissimilarity-based standard error (MultSE), was recently proposed for assessing sample-size adequacy in ecological communities. Here, we used it on coastal sand dune systems in three Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) in Tuscany. Our aim was to assess the minimum number of replicates necessary to adequately characterize sand dune environments in terms of differences between habitats and SACs, after a preliminary baseline assessment of plant diversity. Analysis of \u3b1 and \u3b2 diversity indicated that especially between habitats the three SACs protect different plant communities. The study of the MultSE profiles showed that the minimum number of replicates was related to habitat features and varied between 10 and 25 plots. Two-way PERMANOVA and SIMPER analysis on the full and reduced datasets confirmed that SACs and habitats host different plant communities, and that the contribution of the target species remained unchanged even with a reduced sample size. The proposed methodological approach can be used to develop cost-effective monitoring programs and it can be useful for plant ecologists and biodiversity managers for assessing ecosystem health and changes

Comparing microphysical/dynamical outputs by different cloud resolving models: impact on passive microwave precipitation retrieval from satellite

International audienceMesoscale cloud resolving models (CRM's) are often utilized to generate consistent descriptions of the microphysical structure of precipitating clouds, which are then used by physically-based algorithms for retrieving precipitation from satellite-borne microwave radiometers. However, in principle, the simulated upwelling brightness temperatures (TB's) and derived precipitation retrievals generated by means of different CRM's with different microphysical assumptions, may be significantly different even when the models simulate well the storm dynamical and rainfall characteristics. In this paper, we investigate this issue for two well-known models having different treatment of the bulk microphysics, i.e. the UW-NMS and the MM5. To this end, the models are used to simulate the same 24-26 November 2002 flood-producing storm over northern Italy. The model outputs that best reproduce the structure of the storm, as it was observed by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) onboard the EOS-Aqua satellite, have been used in order to compute the upwelling TB's. Then, these TB's have been utilized for retrieving the precipitation fields from the AMSR observations. Finally, these results are compared in order to provide an indication of the CRM-effect on precipitation retrieval

Notulae to the Italian alien vascular flora 6

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of vascular flora alien to Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, exclusions, and status changes for Italy or for Italian administrative regions of taxa in the genera Acalypha, Acer, Canna, Cardamine, Cedrus, Chlorophytum, Citrus, Cyperus, Epilobium, Eucalyptus, Euphorbia, Gamochaeta, Hesperocyparis, Heteranthera, Lemna, Ligustrum, Lycium, Nassella, Nothoscordum, Oenothera, Osteospermum, Paspalum, Pontederia, Romulea, Rudbeckia, Salvia, Sesbania, Setaria, Sicyos, Styphnolobium, Symphyotrichum, and Tradescantia. Nomenclature and distribution updates, published elsewhere, and corrigenda are provided as supplementary material

Shedding light on typical species : implications for habitat monitoring

Habitat monitoring in Europe is regulated by Article 17 of the Habitats Directive, which suggests the use of typical species to assess habitat conservation status. Yet, the Directive uses the term “typical” species but does not provide a definition, either for its use in reporting or for its use in impact assessments. To address the issue, an online workshop was organized by the Italian Society for Vegetation Science (SISV) to shed light on the diversity of perspectives regarding the different concepts of typical species, and to discuss the possible implications for habitat monitoring. To this aim, we inquired 73 people with a very different degree of expertise in the field of vegetation science by means of a tailored survey composed of six questions. We analysed the data using Pearson's Chi-squared test to verify that the answers diverged from a random distribution and checked the effect of the degree of experience of the surveyees on the results. We found that most of the surveyees agreed on the use of the phytosociological method for habitat monitoring and of the diagnostic and characteristic species to evaluate the structural and functional conservation status of habitats. With this contribution, we shed light on the meaning of “typical” species in the context of habitat monitoring

Notulae to the Italian alien vascular flora: 14

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of vascular flora alien to Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, and status changes for Italy or for Italian administrative regions. Nomenclatural and distribution updates, published elsewhere, and corrections are provided as Suppl. materia

Notulae to the Italian alien vascular flora: 14

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of vascular flora alien to Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, and status changes for Italy or for Italian administrative regions. Nomenclatural and distribution updates, published elsewhere, and corrections are provided as Suppl. material