Agenda

Silvia Rova, DAIS

L'evento si svolgerà su piattaforma Zoom: https://unive.zoom.us/j/83062769920

Abstract:
Ecosystems contribute to the well-being of our society in a variety of ways, known as ecosystem services (ES), which include, among others, the regulation of ecological processes, the provision of tangible goods such as fish and seafood, and the opportunity to recreate in nature. These ES are by definition dependent on the ecological processes occurring within the ecosystem, which in turn depend on the structure and the condition of its biotic and abiotic components. Therefore, being able to manage ecosystems to achieve a good ecological condition is crucial for maintaining the benefits they deliver to our society. This was exactly the aim of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC), which was due by 2015, and which we failed to achieve in about half of the EU water bodies. In this work we explore the relationship between ES and the ecological status assessed in compliance with the WFD, with a focus on the case study of the Venice lagoon. The results highlight the lack of r elationship between ES and the ecological quality elements which concur to the definition of the ecological status of the lagoon. According to our findings, the reasons for these results, which appear to be in contradiction with the theoretical foundations of the ES concept, can be attributed to two main causes: on one hand, the “sectoral” and “structural” nature of the ecological quality elements, which describe the structure of specific compartments of the biological community, which can be distant from the ecological processes upon which ES depend; on the other hand, the water bodies, the spatial units for the management of the lagoon according to the Directive, which appear not to be fully capable to capture the differences we observe in terms ecological status and ES. We discuss how this could be linked with the lack of achievement of the Directive’s goals, and how ES could provide a possible way forward for the management of the lagoon. The work has been funded by the Interreg IT-HR project ECOSS (ECOlogical observing System in the Adriatic Sea: oceanographic observations for biodiversity) and by the project Venezia2021.