Projects & collaborations
Geological field trips and hiking
Springs and acquifers
Geodiversity and Biodiversity
My currently research topics fall within traditional disciplines such as geology, stratigraphy and sedimentology, water quality, geochemistry and are directed towards understanding the:
– defense against geologic hazards from extreme precipitation;
– management of aquifers and springs;
– relation between Geodiversity and Biodiversity.
In particular, with physical stratigraphy I try to recognize, in the succession of rock layers, the traces of the many processes that have generated them, which leave their signals in the sediments, from which the sedimentary rocks derive. In other words, the “great book” of the Earth’s history – which tells us about the events, life, paleogeographic and paleoclimatic transformations of our planet – is written in the sediments and in the rocks that derive from them, so it is necessary to learn to read it page by page, layer by layer. Stratigraphy can be defined, more precisely, as the science that has as its object the study and comparison of layers of rocks formed in the course of geological eras: knowing their textural composition, their sedimentary structures, their mineralogical and petrographic characteristics, their geophysical and geochemical features, their fossil content, it is possible to reconstruct, step by step, the characteristics and the history of the ancient depositional environments.
I am also interested in the subject of water resources in the mountains because the Apennine springs and the aquifers that feed them are:
- strategic and irreplaceable resources;
- by far the best quality ones.
For these reasons, the Apennine springs require the adoption of monitoring and protection programs and actions, as required by the same Groundwater Directive of the European Union, in which becomes fundamental the choice and application of methodologies for the definition of protection areas, with particular reference to those of respect, adaptable to the specific hydrogeological context. Moreover, the Apennine springs have also a primary role in landscape, tourism, recreation and environment. Mountain water resources are an asset that is currently undergoing processes of qualitative and quantitative impoverishment due to climate change that can cause prolonged periods of drought and a change in the style of precipitation.
Outside of these work areas, I am passionate about music, photography and hiking.
