1,721,193 research outputs found
Glocal Education
No full textSince 1999 the Marine Science Group, (www.marinesciengroup.org), research team of the University of Bologna, involves citizens and tourists in the collection of data for scientific research, through a Recreational Citizen Science approach. So far our idea of recreational research has seen the participation of tens of thousands of people in environmental monitoring projects. Glocal Education project, recently developed by our research group, draws on these experiences to develop a participation method based on the recreational aspect of tourism. The result is to actively influence the level of environmental awareness of the tourists involved in the project.
Goals:
• create a training program aimed to increase environmental education in tourists who visit different geographical areas during their vacations;
• study the effects of environmental education programs on tourists’ environmental awareness, on their attitude (short-term) and their behavior (long-term) towards the environment;
• evaluate tourists’ appreciation for the educational program and whether this affects the level of customer loyalty towards the brand hosting the research project
Approach:
The “Glocal” approach is based on the most recent academic subject of Ecological-Economics, which highlights how environmental ecology is strictly dependent on a correct management of resources, and vice versa. It is aimed to develop a deeper scientific understanding of the complex link between human and natural systems, and efficiently allocate scarce resources, including “natural” and “social” capital. This approach contemplates a training course for tourists, custom made for each destination and each environment. A Local approach, extendable to a Global scale. The results of this study will allow us to measure the responsible behavior of tourists towards natural resources over time and to create guidelines and protocols for the implementation of programs for the development of eco-sustainable tourism activity. The results will be communicated both to the scientific community, through publication in international journals, and to tourism industry operators during dedicated events such as BIT– International Travel Exhibition and TTG-Travel Experience
ENvironmental DRIvers affecting fattening and calcification process of wild and farmed MUSsels in the Adriatic Sea (ENDRIMUS).
No full textMussels, belonging to the species Mytilus galloprovincialis Lamark, 1819, represent the most important species for the Italian shellfish production. In EU, Italy is the second largest producer of this species (coming only after Spain), and the first one in the Mediterranean Region. The production comes mostly from aquaculture in lagoons and open-sea and to a smaller extent, from wild populations in the central
and northern Adriatic Sea (77% of Italian production). However, in the last few years, both farmed and wild mussels have shown issues in terms of meat reduction and increased shell fragility, which negatively affect their quality, and hence their market value. Since farming technics have not been substantially modified with time, and changes also affect the wild populations, these impacts are inevitably caused by environmental phenomena that have occurred in recent years. Seen as scientific
data regarding how these changes impact product quality are lacking, the current information comes solely from producers. In this contest, the ENDRIMUS Project wants to pose attention on this phenomenon happening in the Adriatic Sea, identifying which environmental drivers can mainly affect the growth of mussels in this area. It has been established in literature that river discharges are the main source of nutrients and other inorganic elements, which are at the base of the trophic web in the Adriatic Sea. By employing an interdisciplinary team of experts in marine ecology and biology, environmental and analytical chemistry, and oceanography, ENDRIMUS will evaluate which environmental drivers mainly affect the growth and quality of farmed and wild mussel populations along a latitudinal gradient from North to South of the Italian Adriatic coast. For this purpose, physical and biochemical features, as well as biological variables of the water column will be investigated, along with phytoplankton community abundance and composition, which represent an important source of food for these filter feeding animals. Biological analysis on mussel content and an in-depth study on the shell features at the macro, micro and nanoscale level will be carried out on samples from farmed and wild mussels collected at different sites, to evaluate how this bivalve
species is sensitive to variations in environmental conditions. ENDRIMUS points out the importance of considering multiple environmental parameters to investigate bivalve growth and allow for a proper management of bivalve aquaculture. Indeed, given the great socio-economic relevance of Mytilus galloprovincialis along the Italian Adriatic coasts, projects like this one are crucial to guarantee a knowledge-based management of this important resource. The results produced will be disseminated to international, national, and regional stakeholders and the scientific community, in order to provide useful information for future development in mussel farming
Population dynamics of the solitary coral Balanophyllia europaea (Anthozoa, Scleractinia) at Calafuria
No full text“Frontiers in Marine Science”, Specialty Section “Marine Pollution”
No full textFrontiers in Marine Science publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research that advances our understanding of all aspects of the environment, biology, ecosystem functioning and human interactions with the oceans.
The Specialty Marine Pollution is concerned with the environmental health status of transient estuarine, marine coastal and offshore habitats including their organism
Recreational citizen science: unite research with what citizens do for fun. Divers in marine biodiversity monitoring.
Full text linkInstitutes often lack funds and manpower to perform large-scale biodiversity monitoring. Citizens can be involved, contributing to the data collection, thus decreasing costs. Underwater research requires specialist skills and SCUBA certification, and it can be difficult to involve volunteers. Our studies, started in 1999, involve large numbers of recreational divers for collecting data on the status of marine biodiversity. The "recreational monitoring" approach used in our projects allowed volunteers to perform normal recreational activities, ensuring the reliability of data and a greater amount of divers involved. Using user-friendly questionnaires, volunteers report the presence of taxa encountered during their dives. In these last 19 years recreational divers have been involved in 4 research projects: Mediterranean Hippocampus Mission (1999-2001), Divers for the Environment (2002-2005), STE: Scuba Tourism for the Environment (2007-2015) and Sea Sentinels - Divers United for the Environment (DUE project, 2017-2020). Mediterranean Hippocampus Mission was a census of two species of seahorses. Results showed that the greatest abundance of seahorses was reported in the northern Adriatic and central-southern Tyrrhenian seas and the distribution may be correlated with the degree of degradation of Posidonia oceanica meadows. Divers United for the Environment aimed to assess the marine biodiversity status along the Italian coasts. The results indicated a high significantly negative correlation between environmental quality and latitude (trend supported by surveys of the Italian Ministry of the Environment). The STE project investigated on the health of Red Sea coral reefs. The results revealed spatial trends across areas subjected to different protection strategies (higher biodiversity values in Sharm el-Sheikh, within protected Ras Mohammed National Park and Tiran Island, than in the less-regulated Hurghada area). Thanks to the collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, the results shall be integrated in the Egyptian coastlines management. Quality of volunteer-recorded data were validated comparing them with those collected by an experienced researcher. The results showed a sufficient level of the quality of data collected by volunteers. At last, the DUE project, started in March 2017, aims to verify the health status of the Mediterranean Sea after 12 years since the previous survey (Divers for the Environment). The greatest limitation with using volunteers to collect data was the uneven spatial distribution of samples. The benefits were the considerable amounts of data collected over short time periods and at low costs
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Investigating mollusk shells organic matrix composition: isolation and characterization of bioactive molecules
No full textInfluence of environmental parameters on growth in the solitary non-zooxanthellate coral Caryophyllia inornata naturally living at volcanic vents
No full textSkeletal growth, morphology and skeletal parameters of a temperate, solitary and zooxanthellate coral along a depth gradient in the Dardanelles (Turkey)
No full textStudying coral populations along depth gradients
is important to find out if deeper habitats can act as
microrefugia from bleaching and/or mortality events
associated with high temperature and irradiance. Skeletal
biometry, growth, and parameters of the solitary, zooxanthellate, Mediterranean endemic scleractinian Balanophyllia europaea were determined at depths of 1, 11, and 21 m
in the Dardanelles (Turkey), to (1) compare the population
parameters in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea with the wellcharacterized populations in the NW Mediterranean Sea,
that are threatened by ocean warming and acidification; and
(2) assess the variation of studied parameters along a depth
gradient in the Dardanelles. Biometric relationships were
similar to those previously described on Italian coasts. At
shallow depths, average coral height decreased, likely
because of (1) the higher current velocity and wave action
that is expected to limit vertical skeletal growth and/or (2)
the need to increase photoprotection in high light conditions. Only a very slight increase of skeletal bulk density
with depth (and consequent slight decrease of porosity) was
detected, while age–length relationship, linear extension
rate and net calcification rate were homogeneous among
depths. The homogeneous net calcification rate with depth
may depend on the balance between the response of
zooxanthellae photosynthesis to temperature and light. In
fact, shallow depths are likely to experience higher temperatures that negatively affect photosynthetic efficiency of
B. europaea, thus reducing available energy for calcification. On the other hand, lower light availability with depth
is expected to decrease photosynthesis and these two
effects may compensate each other. Unexpectedly, the
observed net calcification rate in the Dardanelles was
almost double than the higher value reported in the
northwestern Mediterranean Sea. Further analyses are
required to analyse if energetic trade-offs between skeletal
growth and reproduction differ in the two regions
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