Research and Publications

Life Minnow, "Small fish, small streams, big challenges: conservation of endangered species in tributaries of the upper Po river", is a project co-funded by the European Union's Life Programme 2021-2027 and coordinated by the Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology of the University of Turin. The project aims to reverse the population decline of six small freshwater species protected by...

Diatoms, like other bioindicators used in river monitoring, could be useful in the assessment of agricultural environments, enhancing an integrated approach in the management of these sites, which are often subject to difficult cultural dynamics. In this context, they are useful tools for the analyses of different sectoral analyses. For this purpose, a study was conducted within two rice-growing...

Glacier retreat is a well-established and globally recognized phenomenon caused by global climate change. Some projections to 2100 estimate a global loss of glacier mass ranging from 50% to 95%, depending on different scenarios. Even in Italy, glaciers have been severely affected by global warming: over the last 20 years in Aosta Valley, 32 glaciers have disappeared and 22% of the glacial area has...

Climate change is rapidly altering the natural features of our rivers, intensifying extreme events such as droughts and floods. Alongside global-scale factors, we find local causes, such as water captation for human purposes. River droughts, in particular, are becoming increasingly common even in the alpine environments. In this contect, a recent national PRIN project (aptly named NOACQUA - Responses...

In recent years, the awareness on the importance of preserving Alpine watercourses as habitats for unique, sensitive, and often threatened species has significantly grown. Part of the research carried out in Alpstream has recently focused on studying the benthic diatom flora inhabiting the Alpine streams, with a focus on the taxonomic richness and biodiversity characterizing these communities, as...

An important line of research at ALPSTREAM is dedicated at studying how Alpine rivers "work". These systems are highly heterotrophic, meaning that the energy sustaining their food webs largely comes from external sources, which mainly consist of organic detritus with terrestrial-origin. In this context, it is essential to understand how climate change might alter decomposition processes and river...

How do rivers work? How are aquatic species distributed in the river network? Several theories have been proposed throughout the history of river ecology to explain how community composition changes along the river course in response to the gradual shifts of environmental and trophic conditions. Among these, the River Continuum Concept (Vannote et al., 1980) is certainly the most well-known.

The goal of the project is to provide scientific support to the review process of the Po River Basin District Management Plan (PdG Po) concerning the production and management of nutrient loads. This will be achieved through the quantification of diffuse and point-source anthropogenic pressures of nitrogen and phosphorus loads within the Po River Basin watersheds, and by analyzing the relationship...

In recent decades, there has been an increase in the use of impounded water for energy production. Piedmont is one of Italy’s leading regions in hydroelectric production. While this form of energy is valuable and renewable, a much more environmentally sustainable management of existing facilities is urgently needed. This can only be achieved through the formulation and implementation of an...

Rivers breathe: they emit carbon dioxide in different ways, depending on local environmental conditions, latitude, season, and time of day. These findings, stemming from the EURORUN project (Assessing CO2 Fluxes from European Running Waters), were published in a journal belonging to the Nature group in collaboration with 16 research groups from 11 European countries, with ALPSTREAM representing...

This project began in 2007 as part of a PhD thesis carried out in collaboration with the LIST Research Center in Luxembourg. It aimed at understanding the ecological meaning of morphological alterations in benthic river diatoms and their potential use in environmental monitoring. One of the main outcomes of this research was the publication, in 2009, of a comprehensive literature review on diatom...

A comprehensive checklist of plants colonizing the riparian zone of the Po River (from Ostana to Pian Beatrice) was compiled by two students from the University of Zaragoza, Alberto Cirera and Miguel Guerra, during their stay in Ostana in July 2022. This work was part of the UNITA rural mobility project, in collaboration with the Viso a Viso cooperative. The inventory includes over 100 botanical...

In recent decades, factors operating at a global (e.g., climate change) and local (e.g., increased anthropogenic use) scales, have been affecting both the quality and quantity of water resources. Silvia Bertolotti, a SustNet PhD student affiliated with Alpstream, has recently published an intriguing scientific article in collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Chemistry. The study...