Soil, humipedon, forest life and management

In recent years, three sections (Humipedon, Copedon and Lithopedon) were recognized in the soil profile. It was then possible to link the first and most biologically active section to the characteristics of the environment and soil genesis. In particular, it is now possible to distinguish organic horizons, mainly produced by arthropods and enchytraeids in cold and acidic or dry and arid environments, from organo-mineral horizons produced by earthworms in more temperate and mesotrophic environments. Each set of horizons can be associated with a humus system or form, with important implications for forestry. Anecic/endogeic earthworms and Mull or Amphi systems are more abundant in the early and late stages of sylvogenesis; by completely recycling litter, earthworms accelerate the availability of organic and inorganic soil nutrients to roots and pedofauna. On the other hand, arthropods and Moder or Tangel systems characterize the intermediate stages of sylvogenesis, where thickening in the organic horizons and the parallel impoverishment/reduction in the underlying organo-mineral horizons are observed. Recognizing the humus system at the right spatial and temporal scale is crucial for the biological management of a forest. This article includes a data review, new data from a doctoral thesis, and recent comparisons of Italian and French investigation

The Italian TREETALKER NETWORK (ITT-Net): continuous large scale monitoring of tree functional traits and vulnerabilities to climate change

20openItalian coauthor/editorThe Italian TREETALKER NETWORK (ITT-Net) aims to respond to one of the grand societal challenges: the impact of climate changes on forests ecosystem services and forest dieback. The comprehension of the link between these phenomena requires to complement the most classical approaches with a new monitoring paradigm based on large scale, single tree, high frequency and long-term monitoring tree physiology, which, at present, is limited by the still elevated costs of multi-sensor devices, their energy demand and maintenance not always suitable for monitoring in remote areas. The ITT-Net network will be a unique and unprecedented worldwide example of real time, large scale, high frequency and long-term monitoring of tree physiological parameters. By spring 2020, as part of a national funded project (PRIN) the network will have set 37 sites from the north-east Alps to Sicily where a new low cost, multisensor technology “the TreeTalker®” equipped to measure tree radial growth, sap flow, transmitted light spectral components related to foliage dieback and physiology and plant stability (developed by Nature 4.0), will monitor over 600 individual trees. A radio LoRa protocol for data transmission and access to cloud services will allow to transmit in real time high frequency data on the WEB cloud with a unique IoT identifier to a common database where big data analysis will be performed to explore the causal dependency of climate events and environmental disturbances with tree functionality and resilience. With this new network, we aim to create a new knowledge, introducing a massive data observation and analysis, about the frequency, intensity and dynamical patterns of climate anomalies perturbation on plant physiological response dynamics in order to: 1) characterize the space of “normal or safe tree operation mode” during average climatic conditions; 2) identify the non-linear tree responses beyond the safe operation mode, induced by extreme events, and the tipping points; 3) test the possibility to use a high frequency continuous monitoring system to identify early warning signals of tree stress which might allow to follow tree dynamics under climate change in real time at a resolution and accuracy that cannot always be provided through forest inventories or remote sensing technologies.openCastaldi, S.; Antonucci, S.; Asgharina, S.; Battipaglia, G.; Belelli Marchesini, L.; Cavagna, M.; Chini, I.; Cocozza, C.; Gianelle, D.; La Mantia, T.; Motisi, A.; Niccoli, F.; Pacheco Solana, A.; Sala, G.; Santopuoli, G.; Tonon, G.; Tognetti, R.; Zampedri, R.; Zorzi, I.; Valentini, R.Castaldi, S.; Antonucci, S.; Asgharina, S.; Battipaglia, G.; Belelli Marchesini, L.; Cavagna, M.; Chini, I.; Cocozza, C.; Gianelle, D.; La Mantia, T.; Motisi, A.; Niccoli, F.; Pacheco Solana, A.; Sala, G.; Santopuoli, G.; Tonon, G.; Tognetti, R.; Zampedri, R.; Zorzi, I.; Valentini, R

The Brescia Internationally Validated European Guidelines on Minimally Invasive Pancreatic Surgery (EGUMIPS)

Objective: To develop and update evidence-based and consensus-based guidelines on laparoscopic and robotic pancreatic surgery. Summary Background Data: Minimally invasive pancreatic surgery (MIPS), including laparoscopic and robotic surgery, is complex and technically demanding. Minimizing the risk for patients requires stringent, evidence-based guidelines. Since the International Miami Guidelines on MIPS in 2019, new developments and key publications have been reported, necessitating an update. Methods: Evidence-based guidelines on 22 topics in 8 domains were proposed: terminology, indications, patients, procedures, surgical techniques and instrumentation, assessment tools, implementation and training, and artificial intelligence. The Brescia Internationally Validated European Guidelines on Minimally Invasive Pancreatic Surgery (EGUMIPS, September 2022) used the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) methodology to assess the evidence and develop guideline recommendations, the Delphi method to establish consensus on the recommendations among the Expert Committee, and the AGREE II-GRS tool for guideline quality assessment and external validation by a Validation Committee. Results: Overall, 27 European experts, 6 international experts, 22 international Validation Committee members, 11 Jury Committee members, 18 Research Committee members, and 121 registered attendees of the 2-day meeting were involved in the development and validation of the guidelines. In total, 98 recommendations were developed, including 33 on laparoscopic, 34 on robotic, and 31 on general MIPS, covering 22 topics in 8 domains. Out of 98 recommendations, 97 reached at least 80% consensus among the experts and congress attendees, and all recommendations were externally validated by the Validation Committee. Conclusions: The EGUMIPS evidence-based guidelines on laparoscopic and robotic MIPS can be applied in current clinical practice to provide guidance to patients, surgeons, policy-makers, and medical societies.</p

The FLUXNET2015 dataset and the ONEFlux processing pipeline for eddy covariance data

The FLUXNET2015 dataset provides ecosystem-scale data on CO2, water, and energy exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and other meteorological and biological measurements, from 212 sites around the globe (over 1500 site-years, up to and including year 2014). These sites, independently managed and operated, voluntarily contributed their data to create global datasets. Data were quality controlled and processed using uniform methods, to improve consistency and intercomparability across sites. The dataset is already being used in a number of applications, including ecophysiology studies, remote sensing studies, and development of ecosystem and Earth system models. FLUXNET2015 includes derived-data products, such as gap-filled time series, ecosystem respiration and photosynthetic uptake estimates, estimation of uncertainties, and metadata about the measurements, presented for the first time in this paper. In addition, 206 of these sites are for the first time distributed under a Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0) license. This paper details this enhanced dataset and the processing methods, now made available as open-source codes, making the dataset more accessible, transparent, and reproducible.Peer reviewe

Climate control of terrestrial carbon exchange across biomes and continents

Peer reviewe

Inventory, distribution and topographic features of rock glaciers in the southern region of the Eastern Italian Alps (Trentino)

A GIS-based rock glacier inventory was conducted in a region of about 6200 km2 located in the southern sector of the Eastern Italian Alps (Trentino). The rock glaciers cover a total area of 33.3 km2, which is more than 1.4% of the area located above 1600 m a.s.l. and is comparable to the area covered by glaciers (38.3 km2 in 2003). The rock glaciers are located at a mean elevation of 2282 ±289 m a.s.l. and are distributed in an elevation range of about 1440 m. Considering separately the two classes of intact and relict (i.e. with no permafrost) rock glaciers, the mean elevation is 2632 ±205 m a.s.l. and 2169 ±211 m a.s.l. respectively. Relict rock glaciers are found between 1650 and 2700 m a.s.l., whereas above 2800 m a.s.l. only intact rock glaciers exist. The mean aspect of all the inventoried rock glaciers is 43°. A dominant northern orientation does not emerge in the class of the intact forms, whereas the relict rock glaciers show a predominant northern orientation with a mean aspect of about 30°. According to the mean elevation of the intact rock glaciers, the lower boundary of permafrost in the studied region would be located at an elevation of approximately 2630 m a.s.l. This boundary varies significantly when considering the different exposures, and ranges from about 2510 m a.s.l. on north-facing slopes to about 2690 m a.s.l. on those exposed to the south. The lower boundary of permafrost existence in the past, as marked by the mean altitude of the relict rock glaciers, was located about 450 m lower than the modern one with variations included in a range of 230 m according to the exposure. This provides a rough estimation of the shift in elevation of the lower permafrost boundary between the present-day and the time when the relict rock glaciers were active. Accordingly, a MAAT increase of about 2.9°C can be calculated applying a standard vertical lapse rate (0.65°C/100 m) to this shift

A REGIONAL-SCALE ROCK GLACIER INVENTORY IN TRENTINO(ITALIAN ALPS)

none6A number of rock glacier inventories were implemented in the framework of PermaNET (Permafrost long-term monitoring network), a project part of the European Territorial Cooperation and co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the scope of the Alpine Space Programme (www.alpine-space.eu). Rock glaciers are regarded as one of the most prominent permafrost-related landforms in the alpine territories. A new statistical model and a permafrost distribution map for the entire Alps are partly based on the rock glacier inventories carried out within the project and, in this framework, a new inventory was completed also in the province of Trento. This region is located in the southern part of the Alps and 20% of its territory lies above an altitude of 2000 m a.s.l. The rock glacier inventory is based on analyses carried out in a GIS using a recent (2006) orthophoto (resolution of 0.5m) and a DEM (grid resolution of 2m). First, the rock glaciers were identified using i) the orthophotos and ii) an hillshade derived from the DEM. Then, the outline of the landforms were digitized in the GIS as polygon shapes. The characteristics of the rock glaciers were included in an attribute table linked to the shapes. Our database consist of several descriptive parameters, including that of the Permafrost Evidences Database (PED) of the PermaNET project. However, in agreement with other project partner (e.g. ARPA Valle d'Aosta), we used a number of supplementary parameters, in order to achieve a more complete description of the landforms. The database was partially filled in during the landform digitalization, but most of the information (particularly the morphometric parameters) were obtained from analyses performed in the GIS. In summary, a first group of descriptive parameters of each rock glacier include: location (mountain group and coordinates), altitude (mean and range), slope, length, width, perimeter and area. Other parameters describe additional characteristics, such as: geometry (lobate or tongue shape); general morphology (simple, complex); surface morphology (presence of longitudinal and transverse ridges and furrows and/or hollows and pits); lithology of the feeding area; debris source (talus, till); degree of vegetation coverage, relationships with the local vegetation boundaries and with the glaciers/perennial snowfields located above the rock glacier. Particular attention was paid to the definition of the activity status of the rock glaciers, that were classified as intact (active and inactive landforms containing frozen material) or relict (landforms without frozen material). The assessment was based on i) several evidences visible in the orthophotos and in the DEM, ii) direct field observations carried out in our previous works and iii) field data (i.e. topographic surveys). We used particularly restrictive criteria for classifying the activity status of the rock glaciers from the orthophotos, and this may have resulted in a slightly lower percentage of intact landforms compared to other inventories. Our inventory includes a total of 705 rock glaciers, 134 (19%) classified as intact, the others as relict. They are located at an average altitude 2280 m a.s.l., with a considerable distinction between relict (average altitude of 2190 m a.s.l.) and intact (average altitude of 2660 m a.s.l.) landforms. 50.3% of the rock glaciers face towards N, NE and NW, while 35.2% face towards S, SE and SW. The landforms density (n of rock glacier/km2) is notably different in the various mountain groups of the province, and this seems to be related to the different lithologies that characterize the region. The average surface of the rock glaciers is about 4.7 hectares (0.047 km2). The total area covered by the rock glaciers (33.3 km2) is 1.2% of the entire area of the province located above 1500 m a.s.l., indicating as these landforms are prominent in the periglacial environment of this region.noneSEPPI R.; CARTON A.; ZUMIANI M.; DALL'AMICO M.; ZAMPEDRI G.; RIGON R.Seppi, R.; Carton, Alberto; Zumiani, M.; Dall'Amico, M.; Zampedri, G.; Rigon, R

Osservazioni e studi sul permafrost in Trentino: il progetto PermaNET

Nell’articolo sono presentate le attività di ricerca svolte sul permafrost in Trentino e i principali risultati del progetto PermaNET (Permafrost Long-term Monitoring Network). Sono stati realizzati un catasto dei rock glacier e una carta dell’indice di diffusione del permafrost derivata da un nuovo modello statistico della sua localizzazione. Inoltre, sono state avviate numerose attività di monitoraggio: tra queste, sono in corso misure di temperatura della superficie del suolo e sono proseguite misure topografiche per quantificare lo spostamento di due rock glacier attivi. Sono stati inoltre attrezzati due siti per la misura della temperatura del sottosuolo e dei parametri climatici esterni, allo scopo di valutare la condizione termica del permafrost in funzione dei cambiamenti climatici. La collaborazione al progetto ha consentito di migliorare considerevolmente la conoscenza di questo importante aspetto dell’ambiente alpino del Trentino