Abandoned, Lost or otherwise Discarded Fishing Gears (ALDFG) have significant negative effects on marine ecosystems. In the Mediterranean Sea, the impact of ALDFG is particularly relevant on coralligenous reefs. The management of ALDFG focuses primarily on their removal, however this type of intervention may potentially damage the habitat, so its suitability requires careful prior assessment. Recently, the Gear Removal Index (...

We present the first version of the software POPE (Probability of Occurrence of Paleoseismic Earthquakes, POPEv1.0), designed to assist seismologists in reconstructing the timing of paleoseismic earthquakes on a fault, based on event ages derived from multiple trenches along that fault. The main feature of POPEv1.0 is that it accounts for uncertainties in the input paleoseismic data (i.e. the paleoearthquake ages from trenches...

Coralligenous reefs characterize the circalittoral zone of the Mediterranean Sea, but, in many areas, they are also distributed within the infralittoral zone. Despite their wide distribution, the infralittoral coralligenous reefs are less considered in monitoring programs and no specific methods have yet been developed for their assessment. This study aims at testing a modified ESCA index (I-ESCA) on the infralittoral corallig...

In the Mediterranean Sea, restoration of marine habitats has mostly focused on the endemic seagrass Posidonia oceanica. Despite several transplanting experiments, large-scale projects are rare, and their success is poorly known. The present work describes a restoration project of a large, degraded area in northern Sardinia (Italy) using cuttings harvested from a donor meadow that was destined for destruction due to harbor expa...

Coralligenous reefs are the main biogenic constructions of the Mediterranean Sea. The two main coralligenous morphologies are cliffs and platforms. Coralligenous cliffs mostly develop in shallower waters (about 20-50 m) on vertical/sub vertical rocky substrates. Coralligenous platforms are mostly distributed on horizontal substrates below 40-50 m depth on detritic bottoms and rocky outcrops of the continental shelf. The presen...

The study aimed at contributing to the development of methods to assessing the effects of human disturbance on coralligenous reefs. The effects of the presence of a fish farm on coralligenous reefs were evaluated using the STAR (STAndaRdized coralligenous evaluation procedure) sampling procedure. An asymmetrical sampling design was used to compare the aquaculture site with two reference sites in areas unaffected by human press...