Biodiversity and conservation of coastal ecosystems. Population
genetics. Monitoring of coastal and estuarine environments.
Environmental quality and impact assessment.
My research is dealing with subtidal
ecology of benthic assemblages and conservation of marine habitats.
My studies focused on patterns of spatial and temporal variability
of sandy and rocky bottom assemblages and on the impact of natural
and anthropogenic stress on species abundance and distribution. I
am author and co-author of more the 90 papers published in
international scientific journals and of many presentations to
national and international conferences. I have been director of the
postgraduate Master Course in Integrated Coastal Zone
Management and is teaching Sustainable Development and
Environmental Integration in a European Perspective at the
Cervia
International Summer School Beyond the Enlargement. The Wider
Europe and the new Neighbourhood, organised by
the “Europe and the Balkans International
Network - Centre for Eastern European and Balkan Studies”,
established by the University of Bologna. Recently he has developed
a collaboration with
Erasmus Mundui, EU-COMET TEMPUS and UNESCO-UNITWIN on ICZM
education in Europe.
I have been the
principal investigator and scientific leader of numerous research
projects funded by the European Union, National authorities and
private companies. The EU project Environmental Design of Low
Crested Coastal Defence Structures (DELOS) was aimed at developing
an environmentally friendly coastal defence schemes and leaded to
the publication of the Design Guidelines for LCS (Elsevier, in
press). In the frame of the INTEREG IIIB project TWReferenceNET
(Management and sustainable development of protected transitional
waters) I have contributed to the implementation of the EU Water
Framework Directive in Balkan countries. Since 2002 in
collaboration with ENI I am developing a regional-scale approach to
assess the effects of gas off-shore platforms on benthic habitats
and a study aimed at identifying environmentally friendly options
for the decommissioning of off-shore platforms. With the support of
the Italian Ministry of Environment and in collaboration with the
Israeli Universities I have been developing a methodology for a
multi-criteria EIA and a risk analysis to evaluate the effects of
Artificial Marine Structures on surrounding benthic systems in the
Mediterranean and Red seas.
