Search results for " biodiversity."

Soil Quality as Affected by Intensive Versus Conservative Agricultural Managements

2017

Soils, the earth’s skin, are at the intersection of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. The persistence of life on our planet depends on the maintenance of soils as they constitute the biological engines of earth. Human population has increased exponentially in recent decades, along with the demand for food, materials, and energy, which have caused a shift from low-yield and subsistence agriculture to a more productive, high-cost, and intensive agriculture. However, soils are very fragile ecosystems and require centuries for their development, thus within the human timescale they are not renewable resources. Modern and intensive agriculture implies serious concern about…

Biodiversity dynamics and their driving factors during the Cretaceous diversification of Spatangoida (Echinoidea, Echinodermata)

2004

Abstract Variations in recorded diversity over time present a scrambled signal that is modulated by a large number of variables: the potential of particular life forms to generate evolutionary innovations, external constraints induced by the environment in its broad sense, the heterogeneity of the fossil record and the analytical artefacts due to sampling bias. A key question is how to characterise and quantify the separate input of any given factor in the overall diversity signal. This paper explores the structure of diversity data for spatangoid heart urchins and the sensitivity of recorded diversity to different factors of analytical bias (length of geological periods, proportion of pala…

Evenness, biodiversity, and ecosystem function of intertidal communities along the Italian coasts: Experimental short-term response to ambient and ex…

2023

Biodiversity can promote ecosystem functioning in both terrestrial and marine environments, emphasizing the neces- sity ofbiodiversity conservation in order to preserve critical ecosystem functions and associated services. However, the role of biodiversity in buffering ecosystem functioning under extreme events caused by climate change remains a major scientific issue, especially for intertidal systems experiencing stressors from both terrestrial and marine drivers. We performed a regional-scale field experiment along the Italian coast to investigate the response of unmanipulated intertidal communities (by using a natural biodiversity gradient) to low tide aerial exposure to both ambient an…

PAYMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES FOR THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TERRITORY

2014

Over the last years the interest in environmental s ervices provided by forests has considerably grow. This situation, in developed countries, derive from risi ng demand of new goods and services tied to landsca pe use and leisure activities. These can be considered such as no woody products and they represent externalities produced by forest that, if suitably utilized, could produce value for the area and earn ings for people living near forests. From an economic point of view, at the aim of providing these services, it is necessary the introduction of a suitable payment sy stem or, in alternative, a situation in which posit ive externalities of landscape, in sync with other good s/service…

Smart Sustainable Cities of the New Millennium: Towards Design for Nature

2021

AbstractUrban environments consist of a mosaic of natural fragments, planned and unintentional habitats hosting both introduced and spontaneous species. The latter group exploits abandoned and degraded urban niches which, in the case of plants, form what is called thethird landscape. In the Anthropocene, cities, open spaces and buildings must be planned and designed considering not only human needs but also those of other living organisms. The scientific approach of habitat sharing is defined asreconciliation ecology, whilst the action of implementing the ecosystem services and functioning of such anthropogenic habitats is calledUrban Rehabilitation. However, urban development still represe…

Potential effects of transgenic cotton on soil ecosystem processes in Vietnam.

2008

A reassessment of the sections of the genus Cytisus Desf. (Cytiseae, Leguminosae)

2006

Recent morphological and molecular research on Cytisus and allied genera has produced a great deal of new data relevant to systematics, which have not yet been incorporated into a consistent classification system of the genus. We have compared and evaluated recently published cladograms and phenograms based on morphological and molecular (nuclear and plastid DNA) characters. The genus Cytisus sensu lato, including Calicotome, Chamaecytisus, Chronanthus, and Lembotropis, appears to be monophyletic. A subdivision of the genus Cytisus in 13 sections is presented; one species, C. tribracteolatus, remains incertae sedis. A new section (C. sect. Dendrocytisus) and two new combinations for taxa in…

Pipistrellus kuhlii (Kuhl, 1817) (Mammalia: Chiroptera): a species new to the fauna of Tajikistan

2022

Pipistrellus kuhlii (Kuhl, 1817) (Mammalia: Chiroptera): a species new to the fauna of Tajikistan. In the paper, the first record of Pipistrellus kuhlii (Kuhl, 1817) in Tajikistan is described. The site is located approximately 500 km from the northern sites of this species in Afghanistan. The discussed issues are connected with the possible isolation of the Central-Eastern Asian populations of this species. The article includes a discussion on assigning the population of P. kuhlii from Eastern Europe to a subspecies and suggests the need for further research that would allow for a clear taxonomic assignment of the analysed population.

Festschrift for Francesco Maria Raimondo on the occasion of his 70th birthday

2015

This volume is a collection of botanical articles published in honor of Professor Francesco Maria Raimondo to celebrate his 70th birthday and his activity in the field of botany. It contains the contributions of Italian and foreign colleagues on flora and vegetation of the Mediterranean presented at the international conference “Evolution and adaptation of species and plant communities in the Mediterranean environment”, which took place the 26th February 2015 in Florence at the seat of the Italian Botanical Society.

The influence of climate change on the soil organic carbon content in Italy from 1961 to 2008

2011

Abstract Soils are the biggest carbon store in the world (1500 Gt, e.g. 1.5 × 10 21  g). The European Commission indicates the accounting of soil organic carbon (SOC) variations in space and time as the first step in the strategy for soil protection. It is indeed necessary in evaluating the risk of soil organic matter decline and soil biodiversity decline, and when evaluating the role played by soils in global CO 2 accounting. Previous maps of SOC variations in Italy did not consider the direct effect of climate. There is a marked inter-dependence between SOC and climate. SOC increases with the increase in precipitations and decreases with a rise in temperatures. It is also known that land …