CleAir monitoring system for particulate matter. A case in the Napoleonic Museum in Rome

Monitoring the air particulate concentration both outdoors and indoors is becoming a more relevant issue in the past few decades. An innovative, fully automatic, monitoring system called CleAir is presented. Such a system wants to go beyond the traditional technique (gravimetric analysis), allowing for a double monitoring approach: the traditional gravimetric analysis as well as the optical spectroscopic analysis of the scattering on the same filters in steady-state conditions. The experimental data are interpreted in terms of light percolation through highly scattering matter by means of the stretched exponential evolution. CleAir has been applied to investigate the daily distribution of particulate matter within the Napoleonic Museum in Rome as a test case

A canopy layer model and its application to Rome

An urban canopy layer model based on four energy balance equations at ground level and at building level was developed to simulate and describe the urban climate and the heat storage in an urban setting. Thermal and radiative characteristics of urban and rural surfaces as well as atmospheric parameters related to the general synoptic conditions were used as data input. In addition, buildings were modelled as parallelepipeds and the hysteresis of materials was taken into account. The model provides as output skin temperature of buildings, air temperature and humidity within the canopy layer and hence the mean surface temperature and the air temperature at 2 m above surface. The latter parameter was used for the comparison with in situ temperature observations. The model was applied to Rome in radiative summer and winter episodes. The results, which agree with observations, show that the Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a nocturnal phenomenon, present both in winter (the greatest difference between urban and rural temperatures is about 2 degrees C and summer (the temperature difference is about 5 degrees C), mainly resulting from the urban geometry and the thermal properties of materials. The anthropogenic heat does not play an important role in the UHI development. A monthly nocturnal behaviour of temperature differences between urban and surrounding rural areas shows that the maximum mean value of 4.2 degrees C occurs in August. Moreover, the parks in the city centre, where temperatures are lower, define two distinct heat islands, east and west. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved

Sharing Italian Botanic Gardens\u2019 living collections: The role of the National Biodiversity Network

This paper presents the role of the Italian National Biodiversity Network in making available biodiversity data from Italian Botanic Gardens at a national and international level. The case study of the Botanic Garden of Rome is presented explaining procedures and methods for collecting georeferenced data on living plant species and making them available through web-based applications

More Nature in the City

According to projects and practices that the Italian botanists and ecologists are carrying out for bringing \u201cmore nature in the city\u201d, new insights for a factual integration between ecological perspectives and more consolidated aesthetic and agronomic approaches to the sustainable planning and management of urban green areas are provided