Pianosa_LAB
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECT FOR THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND CARBON NEUTRALITY OF A SMALL ISLAND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

The Pianosa Island and the Pianosa-LAB

Pianosa Island (Long. 10 ° 04'44 "E and Lat. 42 ° 35'07" N) is the fifth largest of the seven islands of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park. Located just 10 miles West of the Elba Island, Pianosa has an area of ​​10.3 km 2 and a coastal perimeter of about 18 km. Formerly called “Planasia”, the island bears this name because it is very flat, with the maximum elevation of 29 m and an average altitude of 15-20 m above sea level.

The island is made up of limestone sediments on a clay base. The climate of Pianosa is particularly regulated by its morphology, in fact the flat shape does not allow the condensation of humid air masses with significantly lower rainfall compared to the other islands of the National Park. On the island there are three main terrestrial ecosystems classified as: abandoned pastures, abandoned agricultural lands and shrubs typical of Mediterranean sclerophyllous (Mediterranean shrub) dominated by a mixture of sclerophyllous and deciduous trees, bushes and grasslands. Species such as Juniperus phoenicia, Rosmarinus officinalis, Olea europea and Pistacia lentiscus.

Abandoned pastures and agricultural lands are often rich in Cistus mospeliensis and Cistus incanus, while the coastal vegetation is mainly composed of Juniperus phoenicia . Pianosa has been hosting a prison since the first half of the nineteenth century. A large penal agricultural colony was active on the island to exploit the fertile land and the resident population was around 2000 people. The prison was closed in the early 1990s and the resident population dropped to just 2 people who are currently in charge of the control and management of the existing infrastructures. All agricultural activities in the colony were abandoned and the island entered a slow process of renaturalization.

In 2000 the National Research Council (CNR) created the Pianosa-LAB, a consortium of five CNR Institutes and four Universities that created an unprecedented and innovative scientific infrastructure on the island with the specific purpose of a long-term monitoring of the ability of ecosystems to regenerate and eventually return to their natural state (Fig. 2). More than 40 scientists funded by various institutions and by the CNR have worked together for more than 10 years.

The island is actually a perfect example of a typical Mediterranean landscape, where a progressive abandonment of agricultural land has been creating a slow and largely unmanaged process of re- naturalization. Continuous measurements made by Pianosa-LAB scientists clearly indicate that the island is accumulating organic matter at a fast rate and that natural vegetation is an atmospheric CO 2 sink. The data obtained with updated methodologies indicate that the island has accumulated more than 6,000 tons of carbon since March 2002. As previously mentioned, the island of Pianosa is currently part of a National Park and this guarantees the existence of a consistent and rigorous nature protection plan,. Pianosa's future must however involve the return of man and human recolonization. Park Bodies, Government Bodies and the Minister of the Environment have repeatedly stated this. Anyway, there are still no precise plans on "how and with what objectives" man will finally return to Pianosa. Some groups push to have some tourist infrastructures established on the island to allow the enjoyment of the beautiful environment and pristine beaches; other groups suggest a return to some sort of agricultural exploitation, whileothers are fighting these projects favoring the renaturalization of the island. The idea behind the Pianosa-LAB proposal is that "to be sustainable, a human society, regardless of its scale and size, must be carbon neutral".Carbon neutrality here means that the balance between the emissions of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) caused by human activities and the absorption of CO2 by the terrestrial vegetation must correspond or be close to zero. Pianosa island is probably the only place in the Mediterranean region where such a measurable goal can actually be tested, experimentally. And this is because in Pianosa we can:
• accurately measure how many grams of carbon dioxide are absorbed by terrestrial ecosystems every second, day or year
• plan human recolonization where every single aspect of the sustainable development of a small human community can be planned, analyzed and verified. The Pianosa island can become a place where nature, man and human activities are integrated into a sort of zero-emission Biosphere.

Pianosa_LAB Publications:
• Colom et al., 2004. Pianosa Island: structure, functioning and biodiversity of main ecosystems. Journal of Mediterranean Ecology 5 (1), 31-40.
• Vaccari et al., 2004. Net Ecosystem Carbon Exchange (NEE) of the Island of Pianosa. Journal of Mediterranean Ecology 5 (1), 53-66.
• Baraldi et al., 2004. The Pianosa_LAB: An integrated research project to assess the carbon balance of Pianosa island. Journal of Mediterranean Ecology 5 (1).
• Reichstein et al., 2005. On the separation of net ecosystem exchange into assimilation and ecosystem respiration: review and improved algorithm. Global change biology 11 (9), 1424-1439.
• Inglima et al., 2009. Precipitation pulses enhance respiration of Mediterranean ecosystems: the balance between organic and inorganic components of increased soil CO2 efflux. Global Change Biology 15 (5), 1289-1301.
• Jung et al., 2011. Global patterns of land‐atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide, latent heat, and sensible heat derived from eddy covariance, satellite, and meteorological observations. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 116 (G3).
• Chiesi et al., 2011. Integration of ground and satellite data to model Mediterranean forest processes. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13 3.
• Vaccari et al., 2012. Land use change and soil organic carbon dynamics in Mediterranean agro-ecosystems: The case study of Pianosa Island. Geoderma 175, 29-36.
• Wang et al., 2012. State-dependent errors in a land surface model across biomes inferred from eddy covariance observations on multiple timescales. Ecological Modelling 246, 11-25.
• Stoy et al., 2013. A data-driven analysis of energy balance closure across FLUXNET research sites: The role of landscape scale heterogeneity. Agricultural and forest meteorology 171, 137-152.
• Verma et al., 2014. Remote sensing of annual terrestrial gross primary productivity from MODIS: an assessment using the FLUXNET La Thuile data set. Biogeosciences 11 (8) 54.
• Scartazza et al., 2014. Comparing integrated stable isotope and eddy covariance estimates of water-use efficiency on a Mediterranean successional sequence. Oecologia 176 (2), 581-594.
• Moreno et al., 2014. Monitoring water stress in Mediterranean semi-natural vegetation with satellite and meteorological data. International journal of applied earth observation and geoinformation 26.
• Xia et al., 2015. Joint control of terrestrial gross primary productivity by plant phenology and physiology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (9), 2788-2793.
• Jiang et al., 2015. Empirical estimation of daytime net radiation from shortwave radiation and ancillary information. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 211, 23-36.
Maselli et al., 2017. Modelling and analyzing the water and carbon dynamics of Mediterranean macchia by the use of ground and remote sensing data, Ecological Modelling 351, 1-13.
• von Buttlar et al., 2018. Impacts of droughts and extreme-temperature events on gross primary production and ecosystem respiration: a systematic assessment across ecosystems and climate zones. Biogeosciences 15 (5), 1293-1318.
• Zhang et al., 2020. Modeling the impacts of diffuse light fraction on photosynthesis in ORCHIDEE (v5453) land surface model. Geoscientific Model Development 13 (11), 5401-5423.
• M Sarti et al., 2020. A Statistical Approach to Detect Land Cover Changes in Mediterranean Ecosystems Using Multi-Temporal Landsat Data: The Case Study of Pianosa Island, Italy. Forests 11 (3), 334.