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The joint impact of human activities and climate change on natural resources lead to biodiversity loss. Therefore, it is important to select protected areas through systematic conservation planning. The present study assessed how representative natural habitats are protected under the nature conservation network, and to identify new—but so far insufficiently—protected areas containing these habitats for sustainable management. We used the Marxan model to select the most valuable insufficiently protected natural habitats in the Czech Republic as a representative example for a conservation strategy for Central–Eastern European environments. We set three conservation targets (25%, 50%, and 75%), defining how much percent area of valuable representative natural habitats should be added to the area of the habitats already included in the Nature Protection Network. To implement these conservation targets it is necessary to preserve 22,932 ha, 72,429, ha and 124,363 ha respectively of the conservation targets occurring in the insufficiently protected areas, and 17,255 ha, 51,620 ha, and 84,993 ha respectively of the conservation features in the areas without protection status. Marxan was revealed to be an appropriate tool to select the most valuable and insufficiently protected natural habitats for sustainable management.

Marine fungi are widely distributed in the ocean, playing an important role in the ecosystems, but only little information is available about their occurrence and activity. Seagrass bleaching is also a neglected phenomenon that seems to be linked to warm environments, even though the causes are still to be defined. In this study, the cultivable mycoflora associated to the leaf conditions (bleached, necrotic and live) and section (from the base to the tip) in the seagrass Posidonia oceanica was investigated in a Mediterranean warm-edge location (Cyprus). A total of 17 Ascomycota species/taxon were identified and results highlighted that mycoflora composition changed significantly in relation to both the leaf condition and section. A few known pathogens of terrestrial plants were detected only on bleached leaves, but it remains unknown whether they have any direct connections with P. oceanica bleaching phenomenon.

This paper analyzes different policies that may promote the transition to sustainability, with a particular focus on the energy sector. We present a dynamic simulation model where three different strategies for sustainability are identified: reduction in GHG emissions, improvements in energy efficiency and the development of the renewable energy sector. Our aim is to evaluate the dynamics that those strategies may produce in the economy, looking at different performance indicators: rate of growth, unemployment, fiscal position, GHG emission, and transition to renewable energy sources.

Purpose In Italy, composting olive mill waste has become a common practice, since it mitigates the environmental problems associated with spreading the waste on land. Compost can be used to prepare growth media for plant nursery cultivation as a substitute for peat, a non-renewable resource whose extraction has long raised environmental concerns. Here, we investigate two common composting procedures--open windrow and static-pile in gas-permeable bags--and compare them to evaluate their environmental impact. Methods We perform a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) in accordance with ISO 14040 and 14044. The LCA considers carbon storage in the soil after 100 years, fugitive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the impacts avoided by substituting for peat. We use cumulative energy demand, global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential, and eutrophication potential indicators in a contribution analysis and explore how the re-use of olive pits for energy production and reduction of commercial fertilizers improves the environmental balance. We also present a scenario analysis that indicates how parameter fluctuations affect the results. Results and discussion Our study shows that peat's impacts can be significantly reduced from 1162.3 to 96.3 kg CO2-eq/Mg for open windrow compost or 43.1 kg CO2-eq/Mg for static-pile compost in gas-permeable bags. For static-pile composting, the lack of volatile organic compound and ammonia emissions and the detection of oxygen concentrations above 12% vol. suggest fully aerobic conditions. Fugitive greenhouse gas emissions were the most important contributions to the GWP. In the contribution analysis for static-pile composting, the avoidance of compost spreading and the carbon storage effect (due to compost usage) contributed 54% of the overall impacts to GWP and between 21 and 45% to the other indicators. Conclusions This LCA study illustrates how horticulturists can improve their resource management practices by recycling olive mill waste materials. Proper management of composting unit aeration can reduce fugitive GHG emissions.

In the last two centuries, land-use change (LUC) has been the most important direct change driver for terrestrial ecosystems. In contrast with the consequent ecosystem degradation, forward-looking spatial policies and target landscape and land-use planning processes are needed from a sustainability perspective. The present paper proposes a framework of action, including different landscape-planning and ecological approaches: from spatial modelling to recognize LUC and build different scenarios, to ecosystem service (ES) assessment to evaluate possible environmental impacts. Three different scenarios were explored: Trend, No Tillage, and Energy crops. The sediment delivery ratio and carbon storage and sequestration ESs were assessed and compared for each scenario. The results show that regional development in line with past trends could lead to further land degradation (with ES value losses, in a decade, greater than 5%). Instead, the two scenarios proposed in compliance with EU policies could bring benefits, if only those related to moderate LUCs and respecting the naturally grass-vegetated land. The aim of the paper is to support decision makers and local communities in the landscape planning landscape planning process. From the local to global scale, guided and shared LUC management allows us to implement sustainable development, based not only on a deep knowledge of the physical environment but also of social and economic issues.

A Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) is a strategic (long period) transportation plan aimed to improve welfare of both people and workers living in the city as well as in its surrounding area. Compared to “traditional” urban transportation plans, SUMP moves the focus from traffic (vehicles) to people with significant advancements in the direction of a sustainable mobility jointly with the quality of life. According to the recent European Guidelines, this type of strategic plan has to be built on existing planning practices and take due consideration: the integration, the participation, and evaluation. Starting from these considerations, in absence of a detailed national guideline implementing SUMP, the aim of this paper was to apply an innovative theoretical decision-making approachfor the development of the Naples (Italy) SUMP. This case study appears to be interesting because of the specificity of Naples, that is the third largest Italian city and metropolitan area with the highest population density. In 2016, the city of Naples has efficiently concluded and ratified a first formalization of acts: 'The analysis of mobility system' and ‘The statement of strategic objectives

Abstract In recent years, Distributed Energy Systems (DESs) have been recognized as a good option for sustainable development of future energy systems. With growing environmental concerns, design optimization of DESs through economic assessments only is not sufficient. To achieve long-run sustainability of energy supply, the key idea of this paper is to investigate exergy assessments in DES design optimization to attain rational use of energy resources while considering energy qualities of supply and demand. By using low-temperature sources for low-quality thermal demand, the waste of high-quality energy can be reduced, and the overall exergy efficiency can be increased. Based on a pre-established superstructure, the aim is to determine numbers and sizes of energy devices in the DES and the corresponding operation strategies. A multi-objective linear problem is formulated to reduce the total annual cost and increase the overall exergy efficiency. The Pareto frontier is found to provide different design options for planners based on economic and sustainability priorities, through minimizing a weighted-sum of the total annual cost and primary exergy input, by using branch-and-cut. Numerical results demonstrate that different optimized DES configurations can be found according to the two objectives. Moreover, results also show that the total annual cost and primary exergy input are reduced by 20% - 30% as compared with conventional energy supply systems.