Abstract
Extreme weather events, land use, and the presence of invasive species can act as pressures threatening biodiversity, resilience and ecosystem services. Particularly in the open cultural landscape, these pressures can suddenly drive ecosystems across tipping points and beyond thresholds of system integrity. Yet, biodiversity holds features for buffering against change. Potential stabilizing mechanisms include species richness, presence of key species such as legumes, and intraspecific diversity. These potential buffers can be promoted by conservation management and political decisions. On this basis, the results of the SIGNAL project and the related scientific based knowledge, will help to develop recommendations that could be used by International, national and local authorities, EU institutions, NGOs, for agriculture, landscape management and biodiversity conservation. Here we briefly describe the project and the Italian field experimental site.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all the people from the SIGNAL Consortium, for their kindness and cooperation to the elaboration and conduction of the research project; Simone Gatto, Khawla Zouglami, Francesca Netti and Mario Messini, who helped in the field works. We also thank the Camerino Montane District, owner of the area managed in agreement with University of Camerino as “Arboretum Apenninicum”, and Riserva Statale Montagna di Torricchio. SIGNAL was funded by the ERA-Net BiodivERsA, with the national funders Belgian Science Policy Office (belspo), German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Bulgarian Science Found and Ministère de l‘Écologie, du Développement durable et de l‘Énergie (France) as parties of the 2011–2012 call for research proposals.
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Cianfaglione, K. et al. (2018). European Grasslands Gradient and the Resilience to Extreme Climate Events: The SIGNAL Project in Italy. In: Pedrotti, F. (eds) Climate Gradients and Biodiversity in Mountains of Italy. Geobotany Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67967-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67967-9_9
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