Questa presentazione descrive le conclusioni finali del progetto ECOPOTENTIAL riguardo al coinvolgimento degli stakeholder delle aree protette nel definire e condurre le attività di ricerca a fianco dei ricercatori, illustrando punti di forza e di debolezza, come risultati da un questionario sottoposto ai gestori delle Aree Protette.

We present a modified version of an existing lake ecosystem model, describing a trophic chain generated by nutrients, phytoplankton and zooplankton (NPZ model). The NPZ model takes into account the vertical dynamics of the biomasses of the main species. We tailor the model to specific ecosystems by including seasonality in the dynamics of the various compartments. Moreover, different species exhibit a different behaviour with respect to diffusion and to the rate of vertical movement. With this model, we simulate the ecosystem dynamics of Alpine lakes located in study sites of the H2020 ECOPOTENTIAL project.

Presentazione orale al side event - GEO Week 2018 - Sede: Kyoto (JP) - La GEO WEEK è la conferenza scientifica internazionale di GEO che precede il summit annuale dei 200 membri di GEO. Si tiene alternativamente in America, Asia, Europa, Africa e Oceania.

Terrestrial and marine ecosystems provide essential goods and services to human societies. In the last decades, however, anthropogenic pressure has produced a loss of ecosystem services that can seriously affect human wellbeing and climate processes at local and regional scale. In order to improve ecosystem benefits, knowledge-based conservation, management and restoration policies are urgently needed. Fundamental to all these is effective monitoring of the state and trends in ecosystem conditions and services. New monitoring methodologies are now available, combining approaches in geo- and bioscience, earth observation data, and in situ data. This digital poster synthesizes the objectives and methods of the ECOPOTENTIAL project, a European Horizon 2020 project started in June 2015, which has been designed to reach significant progress beyond the state of the art on ecosystem services. The project focuses its activities and pilot actions on a targeted set of internationally recognized protected areas (PA) in Europe, European Territories and beyond, over a broad range of habitats, ecosystems and landscapes, including wetlands, arid and mountain ecosystems. Gli ecosistemi terrestri e marini forniscono beni e servizi essenziali alle società umane. Negli ultimi decenni, tuttavia, la pressione antropica ha prodotto una perdita di servizi ecosistemici che può seriamente influenzare il benessere umano e i processi climatici su scala locale e regionale. Al fine di migliorare i benefici degli ecosistemi, sono urgentemente necessarie politiche di conservazione, gestione e ripristino basate sulla conoscenza. Fondamentale per tutto questo è il monitoraggio efficace dello stato e delle tendenze delle condizioni e dei servizi ecosistemici. Sono ora disponibili nuove metodologie di monitoraggio che combinano approcci in geo- e bioscienze, dati di osservazione della terra e dati in situ. Questo poster digitale sintetizza gli obiettivi e i metodi del progetto ECOPOTENTIAL, un progetto europeo Horizon 2020 iniziato nel giugno 2015, che è stato progettato per raggiungere progressi significativi oltre lo stato dell'arte sui servizi ecosistemici. Il progetto concentra le sue attività e azioni pilota su un insieme mirato di aree protette (PA) riconosciute a livello internazionale in Europa, nei territori europei e oltre, su una vasta gamma di habitat, ecosistemi e paesaggi, comprese le zone umide, gli ecosistemi aridi e montani.

Protected Areas are subject to long-term modifications associated with climate and environmental change, enhancing the risk of ecosystem collapse, tipping points and unexpected responses to droughts, fires, floods and other individual events. One of the goals of the EU H2020 Project ECOPOTENTIAL and of the GEO ECO Initiative of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is to quantify ongoing and expected changes in the drivers and the characteristics of Protected Areas in Europe and beyond, using gridded climatic datasets, in situ meteo-climatic and biological data and Remote Sensing observations. Several statistical approaches are used to this goal, with the aim of determining the patterns and properties of the changes currently affecting Protected Areas. Use of suitably downscaled climate scenarios allows for estimating how such changes are projected into the next decades. Here we report the results on the changes in meteo-climatic drivers and in some remotely-sensed variables for the set of Protected Areas participating in the ECOPOTENTIAL project, focusing on a few specific examples encompassing mountain, arid/semi-arid and coastal ecosystems.

The large H2020 project ECOPOTENTIAL (2015-2019, 47 partners, contributing to GEO and GEOSS http://www.ecopotential-project.eu/) is devoted to making best use of remote sensing and in situ data to improve future ecosystem benefits, adopting the view of ecosystems as one physical system with their environment, focusing on geosphere-biosphere interactions, Earth Critical Zone dynamics, Macrosystem Ecology and cross-scale interactions, the effect of extreme events and using Essential (Climate, Biodiversity and Ocean) Variables as descriptors of change. In ECOPOTENTIAL, remote sensing and in situ data are collected, processed and used for a betterunderstandingoftheecosystemdynamics,analysingandmodellingtheeffectsofglobalchangesonecosystem functions and services, over an array of different ecosystem types, including mountain, marine, coastal, arid and semi-arid ecosystems. The project focuses on a network of Protected Areas of international relevance, that is representative of the range of environmental and biogeographical conditions characterizing Europe. Some of the activitiesoftheprojectaredevotedtodetectandquantifythechangestakingplaceintheProtectedAreas,through the analysis of remote sensing observations, in-situ data and gridded climatic datasets. Likewise, the project aims atprovidingestimatesofthefutureecosystemconditionsindifferentclimateandenvironmentalchangescenarios. In all such endeavours, one is faced with cross-scale issues: downscaling of climate information to drive ecosystem response, and upscaling of local ecosystem changes to larger scales. So far, the analysis has been conducted mainly by using traditional methods, but there is wide room for improvement by using more refined approaches. In particular, a crucial question is how to upscale the information gained at single-site scale to larger, regional or continental scale, an issue that could benefit from using, for example, complex network analysis.

This poster has been presented at the first ILTER Open Science Meeting in Skukuza, Kruger National Park, South Africa, 9-13 October 2016 (https://na.eventscloud.com/ehome/156435), and describes the general purposes and organization of the H2020 project ECOPOTENTIAL (http://www.ecopotential-project.eu/) Questo poster è stato presentato al primo ILTER Open Science Meeting a Skukuza, Kruger National Park, Sud Africa, 9-13 ottobre 2016 (https://na.eventscloud.com/ehome/156435), e descrive gli scopi generali e l'organizzazione del progetto H2020 ECOPOTENTIAL (http://www.ecopotential-project.eu/)

The ECOPOTENTIAL project focuses its activities and pilot actions on a targeted set of internationally recognised protected areas (PA) in Europe, European Territories and beyond, including mountain, arid and semi-arid, and coastal and marine ecosystems. Building on the knowledge gained in individual PAs, the ECOPOTENTIAL project addresses cross-scale ecological interactions and landscape-ecosystem dynamics at regional to continental scales, using geostatistical methods and the emerging novel approaches in Macrosystems Ecology, which is addressing long-term and large-scale ecological challenges. ECOPOTENTIAL addresses the entire chain of ecosystem-related services, by (a) developing ecosystem data services, with special emphasis on Copernicus services; (b) implementing model output services to distribute the results of the modelling activities; and (c) estimating current and future ecosystem services and benefits, combining ecosystem functions (supply) with beneficiaries needs (demand). In ECOPOTENTIAL all data, model results and acquired knowledge are made available on common and open platforms, coherent with the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) data sharing principles and fully interoperable with the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI).