4ClimAir

The 4ClimAir project – Monitoring Italian Forest Vulnerability to Climate Change and Air Pollution of Ozone – aims to analyse and understand in depth the impacts of tropospheric ozone (O₃) and drought on the CO₂ absorption capacity of our forests, the true pillars of Italy’s natural capital, by combining field monitoring and model simulation for a set of forest sites in an innovative way.

O₃ is an important greenhouse gas and a fearsome phytotoxic air pollutant for European forests, while drought stress is one of the main causes of decreasing forest productivity in the Mediterranean basin. It is expected that the impacts due to the interaction of these two factors (O₃ and drought) could have detrimental effects on future forest growth. 4ClimAir will therefore provide a new framework for long-term monitoring and new quantitative approaches to monitor the vulnerability of Italian forests to climate change and air pollution caused by O₃.

The main objectives of the project are:

1) To provide a new monitoring network to assess forest carbon sequestration under O₃ and drought conditions, helping to strengthen the existing NEC Italy forestry network;

2) To test a set of models in order to understand the impacts of O₃ and drought on Italian forests;

3) To produce vulnerability maps for current and future O₃ air pollution due to climate change;

4) To share new knowledge to improve the resilience of Italian forests to climate change and air pollution.

The project is in collaboration with IBE-CNR – Dott.ssa Rita Baraldi, ENEA –  Dott.ssa Alessandra De Marco, INCDS (Romania) – Dott. Ovidiu Badea, NUIST (Cina) – Prof. Zhaozhong Feng.