Guilizzoni Piero

Associated researcher

Other information

Piero Guilizzoni is a Senior Scientist at CNR-ISE (National Research Council - Institute of Ecosystem study), Verbania Pallanza, formerly the "Istituto Italiano di Idrobiologia".He has been involved in palaeolimnological research since 1978 when, together with M.S. Adams (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison), he made a first attempt to construct a calibration data set to infer primary production from the concentration of algal pigments in lake sediment.

An Honorary Fellow in Botany (July-November 1975; July-December 1981) at the Department of Botany, Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin - Madison, WI, USA, he has coordinated or participated in many European projects, some of them listed here. Since 2007 he has headed the Working Group on POPs and trace metals in the Lago Maggiore ecosystem (International Commission for the Protection of Italian Swiss Waters). In 2008 he was appointed Associate Editor of the ‘Journal of Paleolimnology’. In 2000 he was selected as a member of POLARNET, a National Research Council organisation for Italian Polar research activity in Antarctica and the Svalbards. Since 1997 has been an invited speakers of the European Lake Drilling Project (ESF-ELDP), European Science Foundation. He has participated in six other EU Projects (Air pollution effects on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems; aquatic food chain biomanipulation and its effects on water quality, ALPE and ALPE 2, MOLAR and EMERGE, on alpine lakes, acidification, anthropogenic and climate impacts). Leader of a work package in the European Project PALICLAS, Palaeoenvironmental Analysis of Italian Crater Lakes and Adriatic Sediments (Contract N. EV5V-CT93-0267) (1994-1996). Head of the Italian side of a Bilateral Project between Italy and Argentina (CNR-CONICET, 2004-2006; 2005-2007) on the Palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate of Italian and Argentinean lakes. Leader for Italy of a work package in the funded European Project EUROLIMPACS (“Reference conditions and restoration strategies”). Head of a CNR-ISE Research Group entitled: “Use of palaeolimnological techniques as a tool for palaeoclimate evolution”. Member of expert evaluators panel for "Global Change, Climate and Biodiversity", a Key action under the Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development Programme. Member of the CNR-ISE Institute Committee. In 2010, 2006 and 2004 he taught courses at the University of Milan on “Alpine lakes”. Member of the Lecturers’ Committee of the Doctoral Thesis on Ecology, University of Parma.

After more than thirty years, he still enjoys sailing on all kinds of lakes to take new cores, and he likes to sample mountain lakes in August, when all his younger colleagues are on holiday. Piero Guilizzoni’s main interests are algal fossil pigments, and in general all biological remains and geochemistry, but he laments the amount of time he has to spend writing papers, research applications and reports, which elicits much understanding and agreement from colleagues who share this experience. He has worked on lakes in Italy, Switzerland, France, UK, Vermont, high mountain regions (Alps, Himalayas), and remote regions (Arctic, Patagonia, Pampas, Antarctica, Tibet, Finnish Lapland, and Siberia).

He is author or co-author of 248 scientific publications (105 in international journals; one on the Encyclopedia of Environmental Microbiology; 49 in Italian journals; 6 Chapters in books; 88 technical reports) on the following topics:

• Studies on the metabolism and primary production of aquatic plants;
• Distribution of photosynthetic pigments in sediments;
• Effects of heavy metals on aquatic plant metabolism;
• Thin layer chromatography of algal and bacterial pigments;
• Eutrophication control by biomanipulation;
• Palaeolimnology of alpine, sub-alpine and volcanic lakes in Italy, Switzerland, remote areas (e.g. Himalayas, Patagonia, Svalbard, Tibet).

Editorial
Associate editor of Journal of Paleolimnology

Curriculum Vitae