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The Project of Interest NextData

 

A national system for the retrieval, storage, access and diffusion of environmental and climate data from mountain and marine areas. 

Funding:

Coordination:


Mountains are sentinels of climate and environmental change and many marine regions provide information on past climate variations. The Project of Interest NextData, formally concluded at the end of 2018, has favoured the implementation of measurement networks in remote mountain and marine areas, mainly in Italy, and has developed efficient web portals to access meteoclimatic and atmospheric composition data, past climate information from ice and sediment cores, biodiversity and ecosystem data, measurements of the hydrological cycle, marine reanalyses and climate projections at global and regional scale. New data on the present and past climatic variability and future climate projections in the Alps, the Apennines, the Mediterranean region and other areas of interest have been obtained and made available. The pilot studies conducted during the project have allowed for obtaining new estimates on the availability of water resources and on the effects of atmospheric aerosols on high-altitude environments, as well as new assessments of the impact of climate change on ecosystems, biodiversity, health and societies in mountain regions. The system of archives and the scientific results produced by the NextData project provides a crucial data base for research, for environmental management and for the estimate of climate change impacts, allowing for the development of knowledge-based environmental and climate adaptation policies. The NextData Project has defined three Grand Challenges: (1) monitoring of climatic and environmental conditions and their ongoing changes in Italian mountains and construction of a system of archives and portals for data distribution; (2) reconstruction of climate and its variability in Italy in the last two Millennia, with special focus on the last 100 years; and (3) development of an ensemble of high-resolution climate projections for the Italian mountain regions for the next few decades. 

The activities of the NextData project led to the publication of more than 150 scientific papers in international journals with peer review.

Dissemination activities led to public talks, popular articles and books, photo exhibitions and books, and videos.


The NextData project at the Annual Conference of the Italian Society for Climate Sciences 2018

The main scientific results of the NextData project were presented during three dedicated sessions at the Annual Conference of the Italian Society for Climate Sciences, held at the Scientific Campus of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venezia-Mestre, Italy, on 17-18th October 2018.
The NextData presentations, focusing on the theme "Climate change in the Italian Mountains and the Mediterranean Region", are listed below.

NextData session 1 - October 17, 10:50 - 13:00  

10:50-11:10 C. Baroni (Univ. of Pisa) A new database for reconstructing the spatial-temporal evolution of the glacial resource in the Italian Alps.

11:10-11:30 E. Palazzi (CNR-ISAC) The Archive of datasets of the NextData project.

11:30-11:50 S. Gualdi (CMCC) Changes in extreme temperature and precipitation and their effects on the hydrological cycle of the Alpine region.

Photo exhibition "A Mountain of Life - High Altitude Ecosystems and Climate Change"

The photo exhibition on mountain ecosystems, part of the research project “NextData“, is at its second edition! After the success of its display at Viote Alpine Botanical Garden in Trento during summer 2018, the exhibition entitled "A Mountain of Life - High Altitude Ecosystems and Climate Change" will be hosted at the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa in Calci, one of the most ancient museums in the world.

The opening of the exhibition will take place on December 14 at 4.30 pm at the Museum’s premises inside the “Certosa Monumentale” in Calci. The exhibition, hosted in the Museum's “Gallery of Minerals”, will be open until April 30 2019.

The book " Una Montagna di Vita – Ecosistemi d’alta quota e cambiamenti climatici " has been published

We are happy to announce the release of the book: “Una Montagna di Vita – Ecosistemi d’alta quota e cambiamenti climatici”, edited by Antonello Provenzale, Simona Imperio e Nicola Destefano. The idea of this book (and the related exhibition) was born within the framework of the Project of Interest NextData, approved by the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR).

After a public call, photographers, naturalists and associations of naturalistic photography have been involved in the realization of this volume to illustrate the Italian mountain ecosystems and the complex processes that determine their dynamics. The captions and short texts that follow the pictures are intended to create a bridge between aesthetic use and scientific dissemination.

The NextData Project at the Annual Conference of the Italian Society for Climate Science

From 17 to 19 October 2018, the Scientific Campus of the University of Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Venice-Mestre, Italy) will host the Sixth Annual Conference of SISC, entitled "Recent trends in climate sciences, adaptation and mitigation". The Conference, which brings together scientists, researchers, economists, professionals, business leaders and policy makers, is an important interdisciplinary platform for the presentation of the latest developments in the field of science and management of climate change. The Conference will include a large session entirely devoted to the NextData project, entitled "Climate change in the Italian Mountains and the Mediterranean Region". During this session, the main results obtained in the NextData project will be presented and discussed. 

This session represents the final scientific event of the NextData project. 

Photo exhibition "A Mountain of Life - High Altitude Ecosystems and Climate Change"

On 22 July 2018, at the Viote Alpine Botanical Garden of Science Museum in Trento, was inaugurated the photo exhibition, organized by Mariasilvia Giamberini and Assunta Donato (CNR-IGG) and by the staff of the Sciences Museum of Trento (MUSE), within the NextData Project. The photo exhibition entitled "A Mountain of Life - High Altitude Ecosystems and Climate Change" will be open to visitors until 30 September.

Through the pictures of nature photographers, who donated their pictures for the exhibition, it will possible to know more about the main types of Italian mountain ecosystems and the differences between various regions and altitudes, the main characteristics of ecosystems and the adaptations of plants and animals to the difficult conditions encountered, the relationships between the components of ecosystems and the complex interaction between human activities and mountain environment. 

NextData at the meeting of the Italian Society for Climate Sciences

On 27 October 2017, during the Annual Conference of the Italian Society for Climate Sciences at CNR in Bologna, a specific side event devoted to the NextData Project was organized. During the meeting, some of the main results obtained so far were presented and discussed. The presentations discussed during the side event are available below.

NextData Side Event at SISC, Friday 27 October, 13:30 - 15:15

13:30 - 13:45 A. Provenzale (CNR IGG) Overview of the project 

13:45 - 14:00 P. Cristofanelli (CNR ISAC) The high-altitude climate monitoring network

14:00 - 14.15 C. Baroni/M.C. Salvatore (DST, Università di Pisa) Database of Italian mountain glaciers

MOVIDA-MultiStations

In the recent years, the need for access to quality-assessed atmospheric data increased notably. However, until today, a single entry point for accessing the data of essential climate variables (ECVs) recorded by the Italian background measurement stations does not exist. For these reason, NextDATA recognized the importance of providing an open access to the historical time series of meteorological and atmospheric composition data recorded at the high-mountain and background observatories supported by the Project. This is also an important step towards the integration of the High-altitude Climatic Observation System and Climate Station Network.

For these reasons, the system MOVIDA-MultiStats (MonteCimone On-line VIsualization and Data Analyses – Multi Stations) was implemented under WP1.1. It is an upgrade of the MOVIDA (MonteCimone On-line VIsualization and Data Analyses) system, launched on 2016, 5th July for celebrating the World Environmental Day.

MOVIDA-MultiStats is developed basing on the R language by using Shiny package (https://shiny.rstudio.com/) for plotting and downloading recorded ECV data.

The system for the data download and visualization is implemented and presented on a GUI (Graphical User Interface). It provides files in “CSV” format easy to import in the most common scientific technical computing languages (R, Matlab, Octave, Scilab, Julia, Python).

MOVIDA–Multistats represents an “easy-to-use” and very intuitive web resource by which also not experts (e.g. high-school student or teachers, university student, citizens) can have access to the time series of ECVs over the Italian territory. Besides providing access to data time series, MOVIDA – Multistats represents a web resource by which external users can run some basic statistical analyses on the time series for each ECV and over flexible period of interests. Thanks to the packages Shiny and Openair (Carslaw and Ropkins, 2012), it is possible to plot raw data, average (on different time scales: daily, monthly and yearly) as well as to perform smoothing of time series to obtain information about long-term tendencies.

The “beta” version of MOVIDA-Multistats, is currently available at the web address http://shiny.bo.isac.cnr.it:3838/plot-multistats-en/ and hosts historical time series for the WMO/GAW Observatories Monte Cimone (CNR-ISAC), Plateau Rosa (RSE SpA) and Lampedusa (ENEA). MOVIDA – Multistats is still under development and new functions and data series will be available before December 2018. Users are invited to provide feedbacks and suggestions to MOVIDA-Multistats contacts.

MOVIDA-Multistats graphical web interface. The system is accessible by the web address http://shiny.bo.isac.cnr.it:3838/plot-multistats-en/

Movies on the distribution and abundance of pollen in Italy during the Holocene

Stochastic downscaling tool for precipitation

A web-based stochastic downscaling tool for precipitation is available.
 

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