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Although the Mediterranean Sea covers approximately a 0.7% of the world's ocean area, it represents a major reservoir of marine and coastal biodiversity. Among marine organisms, sponges (Porifera) are a key component of the deep-sea benthos, widely recognized as the dominant taxon in terms of species richness, spatial coverage, and biomass. Sponges are evolutionarily ancient, sessile filter-feeders that harbor a largely diverse microbial community within their internal mesohyl matrix. In the present work, we firstly aimed at exploring the biodiversity of marine sponges from four different areas of the Mediterranean: Faro Lake in Sicily and "Porto Paone", "Secca delle fumose", "Punta San Pancrazio" in the Gulf of Naples. Eight sponge species were collected from these sites and identified by morphological analysis and amplification of several conserved molecular markers (18S and 28S RNA ribosomal genes, mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 and internal transcribed spacer). In order to analyze the bacterial diversity of symbiotic communities among these different sampling sites, we also performed a metataxonomic analysis through an Illumina MiSeq platform, identifying more than 1500 bacterial taxa. Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) analysis revealed a great variability of the host-specific microbial communities. Our data highlight the occurrence of dominant and locally enriched microbes in the Mediterranean, together with the biotechnological potential of these sponges and their associated bacteria as sources of bioactive natural compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antipathella subpinnata (Ellis and Solander 1786) is one of the most frequently observed black corals at mesophotic depths (60–200 m) of the Mediterranean Sea, particularly in the northwestern part of the basin, where its populations can reach high densities and create forest-like aggregations, both along the coast and in offshore locations such as seamounts. Similar to other marine underwater forests, black coral gardens host a rich associated fauna and attract numerous species of commercial interest. As such, these corals are targeted by recreational and artisanal fisheries and are vulnerable to human impact due to their arborescent morphology and low growth rates. Genetic connectivity can provide valuable insight into the processes of population maintenance and replenishment following environmental disturbance and is often used as a proxy for population resilience. In our study, a restriction-site associated DNA analysis (2bRAD) was used to evaluate fine-scale population structure of the Mediterranean black coral A. subpinnata, and to understand which populations could serve as a potential source of genetic diversity for adjacent populations. Colonies from two offshore localities (a Ligurian seamount and a Tyrrhenian canyon) and four coastal populations from Liguria and Sicily were sampled and genotyped. Significant genetic differentiation was recorded between coastal and offshore localities. Moreover, offshore localities were genetically distinct from one another, while all coastal populations were characterized by panmixia. This indicates that offshore A. subpinnata gardens are potentially less resilient to human impact (i.e., demersal fishing activities) due to a limited influx of larvae from adjacent habitats. In addition, they are unlikely to supply coral propagules to coastal populations. Overall, this study highlights the vulnerability of Mediterranean A. subpinnata forests, and the importance of enforcing conservation and management measures to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES, EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive) of these valuable marine ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge of farmers' perception about the value of natural resources in agricultural management should have a central role in the orientation of decision-making processes in the rural policy. The final goal of such knowledge is to involve the population in the management of the territory with a bottom-up approach for a sustainable use of natural resources. Taking as case study the agricultural district of Western Sicily (Italy), which is one of the most important agricultural areas of Europe and is affected by soil degradation processes, our study pursued the following objectives: 1) to measure the adoption of the soil conservation practices (SCP) promoted by the Region inside the Rural Development Programs, with respect to some personal and farm features; 2) to find out the relationship between the personal and farm characteristics and the perceived environmental, aesthetic, productive, and management advantages, deriving from the adoption of SCP. The analysis was carried out using a 'multiple choice' answer questionnaire, administered to 125 farmers. Univariate statistics, Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), and Chi-square test were used. Minimum tillage resulted the most adopted among the SCP not included inside Rural Development Program at the study time, while organic manuring the most adopted among SCP included inside Rural Development Program. The interviewed farmers revealed an inclination to perceive the production benefits (increased yield, and crop quality) and management benefits (production costs reduction, and working time reduction), stronger than the environmental and aesthetic ones. Farmers perceiving management advantages also perceived production benefits. Similarly, farmers perceiving environmental advantages also perceived aesthetic benefits. Effective profitability resulted the main efficient stimulus to the adoption of SCP, much larger than farmers' ecological attitudes, or the presence of subsidies. MCA and Chi-square test indicated that the farm size had the strongest influence on the choice of the SCP, and on the type of perceived advantages. Farmers asked to the Regional Authorities an improvement in technical advice services on the implementation of SCP, in order to make them profitable. • Choice of the practices and perceived advantages were mostly affected by farm size. • Farmers mostly perceived yield/quality increase, together with costs/time saving. • Farmers had a low perception of environmental and social advantages. • Subsidies were not a stimulus to the adoption of soil conservation practices. • Technical advice service is needed to make conservation practices profitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physiographic maps summarize and group the landforms of a territory into homogeneous areas in terms of kind and intensity of the main geomorphological process. These maps are often produced at semi-detailed scales, while examples at the regional scale are much less common. However, because the region is the main administrative level in Europe, physiographic maps can be very useful for land planning in many fields, such as ecological studies, risk maps, and soil mapping. This work presents a methodological example of a regional physiographic map, compiled at a 1:250,000 scale, representing the whole Sicilian region, the largest of the Mediterranean islands. The physiographic units were classified according to the geomorphological processes that were identified by stereo-interpretation of aerial photographs. In addition, information from other published maps, representing geomorphological landforms, eolian deposits, anthropic terraced slopes, and landslide were used to improve the accuracy and reliability of the map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the risk of soil erosion caused by water at the regional level is important for current and future planning of land use and environmental actions to combat land degradation. The gravity of the risk depends not only on the rate of soil erosion by water, but also on other factors, primarily soil depth and workability of the underlying rocks and sediments, which may be used to calculate the eroded soil. We estimate the rate of erosion by water (tons ha−1year−1) applying the Universal Soil Loss Equation model. The map of soil content (tons ha−1) to the effective rooting depth was divided by the map of soil erosion rate to obtain the risk of erosion by water in Sicily, expressed in terms of years of complete loss of soil cover. This map was intersected with a map of workability of the underlying bedrock to give advice on where the cost of soil recovery by deep ripping and rock grinding are very high. 8382.9 km2(32.6% of the Sicilian territory) were rated as at high or very high risk (<100 years), of which 1230.9 km2developed on bedrock with low workability and so very costly to be recovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work is to present a fast and cheap method for high-resolutionmapping of calcic horizons in vineyards based on geoelectrical proximal sensing. The study area, 45 ha located in southern Sicily (Italy), was characterized by an old, partially dismantled marine terrace and soils with a calcic horizon at different depths. The geoelectrical investigation consisted of a survey of the soil electrical resistivity recorded with the Automatic Resistivity Profiling-03 sensor. The electrical resistivity values at three pseudo-depths, 0-50, 0-100 and 0-170 cm, were spatialized by means of ordinary kriging. A principal component analysis of the three electrical resistivity maps was carried out. During the survey, 18 boreholes, located at different electrical resistivity values, were made for soil description and sampling. The depth to the calcic horizon showed a strong correlation with electrical resistivity. The regression model between calcic horizon and the principal component analysis factors with the highest correlation coefficients was selected to spatialise the calcic horizon values. An Normalized Difference Vegetation Index map was used to validate the calcic horizon map in terms of crop response to different soil rooting depths. The strengths of this method are the quick, non-invasive kind of survey, the relevance for vine vigour, and the high spatial resolution of the final map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]