Natura 2000 e paesaggio euganeo. Habitat sotto la lente

La Direttiva Habitat (1992/43/CEE) ha avviato la costituzione della rete di aree protette pi\uf9 estesa del nostro pianeta: la rete Natura 2000. Oltre 15.000 ettari dei Colli Euganei ne fanno parte; un paesaggio vegetale assai ricco, la cui complessit\ue0 \ue8 accentuata dalle attivit\ue0 umane, che ospita 2.300 ettari di habitat di interesse comunitario. Questo volume tratta gli habitat dei prati aridi e dei castagneti, rispettivamente, tra i pi\uf9 minacciati (1,5% della superficie totale), e tra i pi\uf9 estesi (1.700 ettari) dei Colli. Si interessa anche dei boschi di robinia, un albero di origine nordamericana, molto competitivo, che copre 2.080 ettari, una superficie maggiore di quella dei castagneti stessi. Questa competitivit\ue0 pu\uf2 mettere a serio rischio i due habitat europei e compromettere le azioni a sostegno della loro conservazione. Il volume si rivolge a quanti hanno interesse, professionale o personale, per la conservazione e la gestione della natura; affronta, prima che il caso euganeo, i concetti chiave per la comprensione degli obiettivi della Direttiva Habitat e della rete Natura 2000. Del caso euganeo approfondisce la flora, le farfalle e le cavallette, fornendo strumenti per la valutazione del grado di conservazione e dell\u2019incidenza delle attivit\ue0 umane, nonch\ue9 dei benefici che da essa possono derivare

City Nature Challenge: an effective Citizen Science approach for monitoring urban biodiversity

City Nature Challenge is an international citizen science initiative, promoted by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences. The challenge, which aims at increasing the knowledge of urban nature through public participation, involves cities from several countries. It\u2019s a bioblitz-style competition, where cities challenge each other in gathering the highest number of observations, finding the highest number of different taxa, and engaging the highest number of citizens. As a result of the successful 2017 edition of City Nature Challenge (> 4000 people involved across 16 US cities; >125,000 observations; >8600 species) the event has gone global. In 2018, 68 cities all over the world were involved in a 4-days competition in which over 17,000 citizens have collected more than 440,000 observations of 18,000 taxa. Rome and Padua were the two Italian cities taking part in the contest. The participants used two mobile applications, \u201cCSMON-LIFE\u201d and \u201ciNaturalist\u201d. More than 250 Italian citizens collected 1,700 observations of more than 500 taxa. Data have been validated and are now feeding national (Italian Network of Biodiversity) and international (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) aggregators of primary biodiversity data. These data will be used to investigate environmental issues such as: biodiversity impact due to the presence of invasive alien species; effects of climate change; conservation of rare species; human effects on environment. The success of this global citizen science initiative paved the way for defining new strategies in biodiversity data collection to support the development of international research infrastructures, such as LifeWatch

City Nature Challenge: an effective Citizen Science approach for monitoring urban biodiversity

City Nature Challenge is an international citizen science initiative, promoted by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences. The challenge, which aims at increasing the knowledge of urban nature through public participation, involves cities from several countries. It’s a bioblitz-style competition, where cities challenge each other in gathering the highest number of observations, finding the highest number of different taxa, and engaging the highest number of citizens. As a result of the successful 2017 edition of City Nature Challenge (> 4000 people involved across 16 US cities; >125,000 observations; >8600 species) the event has gone global. In 2018, 68 cities all over the world were involved in a 4-days competition in which over 17,000 citizens have collected more than 440,000 observations of 18,000 taxa. Rome and Padua were the two Italian cities taking part in the contest. The participants used two mobile applications, “CSMON-LIFE” and “iNaturalist”. More than 250 Italian citizens collected 1,700 observations of more than 500 taxa. Data have been validated and are now feeding national (Italian Network of Biodiversity) and international (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) aggregators of primary biodiversity data. These data will be used to investigate environmental issues such as: biodiversity impact due to the presence of invasive alien species; effects of climate change; conservation of rare species; human effects on environment. The success of this global citizen science initiative paved the way for defining new strategies in biodiversity data collection to support the development of international research infrastructures, such as LifeWatch