Protecting Coastal and Marine Biodiversity is an extremely important global goal that requires constant and rigorous efforts. Adopting systems for environmental data collection that, with the support of experts, promote citizen engagement through citizen science, is an important way to contribute to biodiversity monitoring. As part of the Interreg Italy-Croatia project, CASCADE, the University of Molise has developed a citizen science program called “wild coast”. The program is aimed at intensifying monitoring activities of marine-coastal ecosystems, providing useful information to assess its conservation status, the presence of possible impacts and to develop useful strategies to preserve it.
The Adriatic Sea and its coasts host a unique heritage in terms of biodiversity, thanks to a delicate balance that must be protected through constant monitoring in terms of biological knowledge and applied ecology.
There are many species inhabiting this fragile ecosystem that are threatened by chemical pollution, overexploitation of resources, habitat loss and global warming.
To expand the knowledge about coastal biodiversity in the central Adriatic, Unimol has created a series of citizen science initiatives, part of the CASCADE project, that allow for the continuous collection and updating of data in the wild coast database. The database follows the international standard for data storage set in place by the worldwide iNaturalist network. Observations and pictures for each species can be uploaded to the platform with specific geographic coordinates. To contribute to coastal biodiversity data collection, once you find a species and you want to report it, simply access the WILD COAST CASCADE iNaturalist account.
If you do, you are providing a significant contribution to coastal biodiversity monitoring along the coasts of Abruzzo and Molise!
Among the new coastal-marine fauna data collected, we can report the presence of the sea turtle (Caretta caretta) nesting areas on the sandy coasts of the central Adriatic.
The sea turtle is a highly endangered species that has recently partly recovered its presence and nesting range in the waters of the Adriatic Sea. Many rare or endangered species may also be found near estuaries, delicate environments that are also highly threatened, where collecting information, sightings or finds is essential. CASCADE monitoring activities are providing new information on the presence of animals and plants in river mouths.
