Programma della conferenza

The European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 is triggering significant investments in Green Infrastructure (GI) for enhancing ecological connectivity, especially between EU Natura2000 (N2K) sites scattered across highly anthropized landscapes. In agricultural matrices, although GI actions can improve the role of agroecosystems in supporting N2K functionality, priority deployment needs are still poorly investigated across Europe. Since well-planned networks of natural and semi-natural linear elements (LE) could enhance biodiversity and connectivity, these elements are among the landscape features to be increased in agricultural lands. At a finer detail of investigation, LE themselves can be considered ecosystem subtypes with varying conditions, but a comprehensive methodology is still needed to assess their capacity to support biodiversity.
This study aims to address these gaps by (i) categorizing NUTS3 in W-Mediterranean Europe based on N2K network features, landscape composition, and environmental heterogeneity, (ii) identifying N2K-related GI deployment needs with respect to nodes (protected areas) and links (residual woody elements in arable land), (iii) proposing an assessment method for LE conditions focused on biodiversity-support capacity and based on different structural, compositional and landscape indicators, (iv) exploring extrinsic factors that potentially affect LE conditions (contiguity to protected habitats and governance frameworks), and (v) identifying key LE features to be restored.
This landscape ecology approach allows challenges posed by land-use and climatic changes to be effectively addressed under a multi-level perspective. On the one hand, four GI deployment needs were identified and spatialized: restoring connectivity, consolidating node and link conservation, creating new protected areas, and expanding N2K sites. On the other hand, the proposed LE condition assessment method was tested in eight NUTS3 in Italy and Spain, where structural continuity was found to be the most important feature to be restored. The two levels of analysis are both useful for informing subsequent local actions aimed at N2K network improvement.

Biodiversity is the basis of life on Earth and global ecosystems can become unstable if biodiversity is destroyed. It provides essential biological resources and ecosystem services, for human society. However, the loss of biodiversity is severe and caused by several interacting drivers, accelerating the degradation of ecosystems. Climate change has multifaceted effects influencing biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Habitat fragmentation is also a major factor of biodiversity loss, as it degrades habitats and leads to a significant decrease in the living space available for various species. Within the context of the Broad Area Sites (BASs), called "Murge" and "Tirso", identified within Spoke 4 of the Future National Biodiversity Centre, the research objectives were: 1) the characterization of the biodiversity; and 2) the analysis of different drivers of biodiversity loss, such as land consumption and landscape fragmentation, analyzed through landscape metrics, as well as climate change. The most significant results revealed a high level of fragmentation both within and outside the protected areas characterizing both BASs, especially in priority habitats falling outside the protected areas. This is confirmed also by the dynamics of land consumption, mainly due to urban sprawl, which erodes important and fragile ecosystems, leading to a consequent loss of habitats and ecosystem services. In addition to this local driver, climate change could exacerbate the negative consequences of these changes according to the different capacity of habitats to adapt to extreme events. It is therefore crucial to compare and analyze areas within and outside protected areas to identify gaps in conservation management and strengthen biodiversity conservation priorities also in the context of climate change. These factors contribute to the loss of biodiversity, impacting local environments and global ecological balances and human well-being, highlighting the urgent need for sustainable land management practices that reconcile development goals with environmental conservation.

In the last decades, a global decline in biodiversity has been taking place due to the strong impact of anthropogenic activities. However, in large cities, refuge for pollinators persist and, from a One-Health and urban sustainability perspective, it is pivotal to understand how to properly characterize those ecological components contributing to pollination services in relation to changing landscapes. These components are mainly constituted by species diversity, their interactions and their functional traits, leading to different pollination success according to how the landscape influence them. This contribution will, firstly, delve into these components and how they should relate to pollination. Secondly, examples from several monitoring campaigns will be shown in relation to landscape features (e.g. forest patches, green area size, green area fragmentation). Data from monitoring of bee diversity in six main Italian cities and their interactions will be presented, showing how these may ultimately relate to the pollination of plants. This took place within the Spoke 5 activities (Urban Biodiversity) of the PNRR and NBFC plan. This contribution sheds light on the complex relationship between the environment and the regulating ecosystem services, contributing to a better understanding of how landscapes influence pollination, for a more sustainable and healthful urban environment.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are essential tools for preserving marine biodiversity. Ensuring MPAs’ ecological connectivity is one of the key criteria for establishing coherent reserve networks, promoting the resilience of marine communities to environmental perturbations. To this end, beta-diversity analyses, which measure dissimilarities/similarities among assemblages in terms of species composition, have proven to be effective for quantifying connectivity among MPAs across various spatial scales, from local to regional. The Campania region is represented by approximately 480 km of coasts and hosts four nationally designated MPAs, representing nearly 2% of the regional sea. To assess the ecological connectivity of the four MPAs, we investigated the taxonomic beta-diversity (expressed as pairwise Jaccard dissimilarity) of rocky benthic assemblages, including 36 protected sites plus 28 unprotected sites outside MPAs’ borders. This analysis allowed us to explore potential connectivity patterns and how the actual conservation settings can benefit from the allocation of new protected areas. We considered the two components of beta-diversity, i.e., turnover and nestedness, to untangle the processes determining the dissimilarities observed. Preliminary results showed that species pools across MPAs are quite similar (average dissimilarity is 52%), with turnover being the dominant component of dissimilarity between MPAs in terms of species composition. This suggests MPAs, protecting distinct species assemblages, can contribute to protect representative portions of the regional biodiversity. Including unprotected locations in the analysis led to spatial scale-dependent increases in the nestedness component, suggesting the effects of human pressures as potential drivers of the observed patterns. However, the role of these locations in supporting the species dispersal and resilience within the network is also discussed. The integration of these results with particle dispersion models, showing marine currents flow and velocity, can be a profitable strategy for the identification of linked sites across the study area.