On Wednesday 20 January at 10.00, at the Rome headquarters of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) - Via di Vigna Murata 605, the Presidents and Directors of some of the major Italian research institutions will meet to sanction the establishment of the Joint Research Unit EMSO Italia (JRU), a national coordination body of laboratories, instrumentation and sophisticated equipment, aimed at monitoring and studying the marine environment. Through the JRU, Italy strengthens its leadership within a very long-term research program which has its fulcrum in the European research infrastructure EMSO (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory).
The Joint Research Unit EMSO Italia is an alliance between research institutions with the aim of monitoring the state of health of the central Mediterranean. With this alliance, the strengths and resources of each institution will join together to collect data also relating to natural risks and the effect of climate change on biodiversity.
The institutions participating in this initiative are: INGV, National Research Council (CNR) - Institute for Coastal Marine Environment (IAMC) and Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR), 'Anton Dohrn' Zoological Station (SZN), Istituto Superiore for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), National Interuniversity Consortium for Marine Sciences (CoNISMa), National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics (INOGS), and the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA).
The establishment of the JRU coincides with the final phase of an important investment by the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), with the contribution of the European structural funds, represented by the project called EMSO-MedIT which had precisely the purpose to update and expand research infrastructures already operational in Campania, Puglia and Sicily. These infrastructures make it possible to monitor seismic and volcanic activity at the bottom of the sea, the dynamics and state of health of the sea and of the organisms that inhabit it and the exchanges with the atmosphere, they make it possible to follow the changes induced on biodiversity by climatic variations and from human activity, to carry out laboratory tests and to support the development of technologies for applications in the marine environment. This network includes fixed systems for monitoring in the Gulf of Naples and Pozzuoli and off the coasts of eastern and southern Sicily, while a set of repositionable monitoring modules have been created to be able to intervene from time to time in different sites following the occurrence of natural events which constitute a risk for the environment and for the population. The JRU constitutes an unprecedented commitment of the major Italian players in marine research and will be the body that will allow Italy to maintain a leading position in the participation in the European research infrastructure EMSO, with cutting-edge tools and expertise capable of attracting young researchers and providing services to industries, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and institutions. Speakers include: the Presidents of the research institutions, Stefano Gresta from INGV, Bernardo De Bernardinis from ISPRA, Roberto Danovaro from SZN, Maria Cristina Pedicchio from INOGS; the President of CoNISMa, Angelo Tursi; the Director of the Earth System Sciences and Environmental Technologies Department of the CNR, Enrico Brugnoli; the Rector of the Milano Bicocca University and National Representative in the Horizon 2020 Committee for European research infrastructures (including e-Infrastructures), Cristina Messa.
EMSO (http://www.emso-eu.org) is a European continent-wide research infrastructure in the field of environmental sciences. It is composed of open ocean observatories whose objective is to provide data flows in order to address the complexities of climate change, the defense of the marine ecosystem and the mitigation of natural risks. The ten countries participating in the consortium that manages this infrastructure (Italy, coordination, Spain, France, Romania, Greece, United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Germany, Holland) thus intend to actively promote European scientific research in the marine environment, under the auspices of the European Commission. EMSO has 11 marine observatories and 4 shallow water test sites for long-term monitoring, even in real time, of environmental processes affecting the geosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere and their interactions. The sites are located in European waters from the Arctic to the Atlantic to the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, thus forming a large-scale European infrastructure serving the international scientific community