• Energy Research

Wildfires are critical natural hazards, both in the Mediterranean and boreal regions of Europe, causing significant environmental and economic damages and losses. Operational drought and fire risk forecast services on sub-seasonal, seasonal and climatic scale allow fire protection authorities to increase preparedness and response in drought and fire related emergencies and to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies in these regions.

Agroscenari is a multiannual research project, funded and coordinated at the national level, supporting Italian agriculture adaptation to climate change and developing decision-making tools for public administrations and stakeholders. The project was active in six representative areas: Po Valley, Oristano, Benevento, Destra Sele, Faenza and two small basins in the Marche region. Climate change scenarios were created for every area to assess impacts on the main cropping systems and to identify adaptation options. In the last year of the project (2014) a policy brief (PB) for each test area was prepared in order to promote the transfer of scientific results. In addition to summarizing expected climate change, methods and results, PBs contain a SWOT analysis relating strengths and weaknesses internal to the agricultural production systems with the opportunities and threats from climate change, and suggesting adaptation measures for the Italian Rural Development Programme 2014-2020.

A critical aspect regarding the global dispersion of pathogenic microorganisms is associated with atmospheric movement of soil particles. Especially, desert dust storms can transport alien microorganisms over continental scales and can deposit them in sensitive sink habitats. In winter 2014, the largest ever recorded Saharan dust event in Italy was efficiently deposited on the Dolomite Alps and was sealed between dust-free snow. This provided us the unique opportunity to overcome difficulties in separating dust associated from "domestic" microbes and thus, to determine with high precision microorganisms transported exclusively by desert dust.Our metagenomic analysis revealed that sandstorms can move not only fractions but rather large parts of entire microbial communities far away from their area of origin and that this microbiota contains several of the most stress-resistant organisms on Earth, including highly destructive fungal and bacterial pathogens. In particular, we provide first evidence that winter-occurring dust depositions can favor a rapid microbial contamination of sensitive sink habitats after snowmelt.Airborne microbial depositions accompanying extreme meteorological events represent a realistic threat for ecosystem and public health. Therefore, monitoring the spread and persistence of storm-travelling alien microbes is a priority while considering future trajectories of climatic anomalies as well as anthropogenically driven changes in land use in the source regions.

ook Description Advances in Water Science Methodologies addresses ways and means of using remote sensing data to elucidate the interactions between the atmospheric, oceanic and hydrological processes. Various water-related applications, such as water resources management, environmental monitoring, climate prediction, agriculture, preparation for and mitigation of extreme weather events, are characterized by widely varying requirements of spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions of the remotely sensed data. This book is composed with great care to deal with the appropriate data assimilation methodologies and technology transfer practices, to cover different dimensions of the subject area and to identify potential growth areas of remote sensing applications. By linking with cognate subjects, such as data management and geomorphology, and with the support of two case histories of water resource management, dealing with water harvesting and water pollution, a fuller picture of the subject area is provided. The book is intended for university students and professionals in the area of remote sensing, water sciences and technologies, earth and environmental sciences and related areas.

Co-design processes involving the scientific community, practitioners, end users and stakeholders can efficiently characterize harmful weather events during the growing season that potentially result in losses of crop yield and quality. This study builds on the experience of the EU Horizon 2020 project MED-GOLD for grape and olive. The identified agro-climate indicators are extended from the MED-GOLD regions to the entire ones where grape and olive are currently grown in Europe and Turkey, and used to assess climate change impacts with intrinsic adaptation relevance stemming from the co-design process. Before 2000, only a low fraction of the European grape and olive growing areas was exposed to extreme weather events as revealed by the agro-climate indicators, but this has changed rapidly afterward. Projections show increasingly widespread extreme high temperature events from 2020 to 2080. Approximately one-third of grapevine regions and over half of olive cultivation areas are expected to experience extreme drought conditions. Additionally, the frequency of compound extreme events will increase in the future, especially in the Mediterranean region and under the high-end emission scenario RCP8.5. This outcome calls for a new decision-making mindset that embeds expected levels of climate variability and extremes as the “new normal” for grape and olive in Europe. This will facilitate deployment of the required biophysical, economic and policy adaptation tools.