Monitoring Italian forest ecosystems to understand the impacts of atmospheric pollution and the opportunities for mitigation

Atmospheric pollution produced by anthropogenic activities has detrimental effects on humans but also on plants. When forests are affected by exposure to pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, particles (with size ≤ 10 µm), and ozone, they in turn act as sentinels towards pollutant emission and at the same time provide ecosystem services when they scavenge pollutants form the atmosphere. In order to move towards levels of air quality not giving rise to significant negative impacts and risks to human health and the environment, the revision of the National Emission Ceilings Directive (2016/2284/EU) sets limits on the amount of pollutants that can be emitted by each Member States per year. By recognizing the negative impacts of pollution on forest ecosystems, the Directive also invites member states to monitor the impacts of pollution on forest ecosystems encouraging the continuation of long-term monitoring networks such as the ICP-Forests network. We discuss here opportunities for Italy to attain the directive thanks to a revitalized activity based on existing monitoring networks and the synergies with other newly established monitoring programs.