Paleolimnology

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The Paleoecological Lab of CNR-ISE is a group of research scientists, post-doctoral and graduate students, dedicated to using paleolimnological techniques to provide useful information concerning the role of humans versus natural environmental variability in freshwater ecosystems. We strives to shedding light on past processes while helping to solve some of the problems facing managers and planners today. The focus of our research programmes is to define the effects of climate and anthropogenic disturbance on food web, particularly as they relate to algal and photosynthetic bacteria, and zooplankton ecology, and to evaluate models based on fossil pigments that are now being used for the study of lake reference conditions.

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Research

Most of our work involves with using biological indicators, such as diatoms, chrysophyte scales and cysts, photosynthetic pigments, and invertebrate fossils (e.g., chironomids, cladocerans, etc.).
We use a suite of geochemical techniques, and collaborate with workers using different approaches.
We use paleolimnological techniques to study problems related to lakes, such as eutrophication, acidification, contaminants, pollution, etc.
Our activities involve:

1. Tracking long-term trends in global climatic and environmental change, again using primarily palaeolimnological approaches. This is a global program, but has recently been focused primarily on alpine lakes and arctic and semi-arid regions.
2. Development of new approaches for biomonitoring and the study of global environmental change.
3. Studying biotic responses to environmental change or reconstructing environmental conditions using a selection of biota and organic compounds.
4. Creating and applying transfer functions for pigments and diatoms, which allow the quantification of past changes in temperature or epilimnetic nutrient levels. These records make it possible to reconstruct centennial-scale Holocene and Lateglacial climate changes and the millennial-scale ecosystem dynamics of lakes, as well as the natural background nutrient conditions in surface waters and the timing and dynamics of their eutrophication.
5. Reconstruction of Cladocera diversity from contemporary and past lake communities. Resting egg banks and their use in experimental limnology.
6. Monitoring the fate of POPs and trace metals (e.g. Hg) in the Alpine and sub-alpine region (in collaboration with CNR-IRSA and University of Varese).

A few research programmes integrate observational with paleo-data to improve the understanding of past and present behavior of biota in relation to exogenous stressors (e.g. climate change, human impact) that can trigger dynamic biotic processes in the lacustrine food-web.