Italy's Volcanic Park Survey
This is a life-long project aimed at developing an information and monitoring system for the Campi Flegrei Regional Park.
There is no place on Earth that has the same intoxicating mixture of geology, ecology, history and culture, and at the same time is being destroyed by so many incompetent, corrupt politicians; short-sighted businessmen and the apathy of the rest.
Ophrys apifera, a rare orchid species found on Monte Sant'Angelo.
These are the key events in the project’s history:
1994-1999: My family was having dinner at a friend’s house when they mentioned that I should jump over the boundary wall into the Astroni Crater. I did so and instantly fell in love with this amazing crater. That day I thought it would be great to spend a bit of time researching its ecology. Five years later I finally completed a PhD entitled “Biophysical Modelling of the Astroni Nature Reserve”. The PhD is summarised in Environmental Modelling and Software, Volume 17 (2002) pp 403-412. The abstract of the publication can be found in SysWeb's publication page.
May 2000: biophysical change wasn’t the only problem that the Astroni Crater was facing, so, a joint Conservation / Public Understanding of Environmental Change MSc group project tested the multidisciplinary “Environmental Capital” assessment technique on the Astroni, Monte Nuovo and Solfatara Craters. The project team involved over twenty MSc students and four lecturers from UCL in just under two weeks of intensive fieldwork. The preliminary findings were presented at a conference within the Castello di Baia where I almost burst into tears with anger for the lack of information available on the Campi Flegrei and how local scientists were hoarding the little information that there was. Something had to be done to redress this!
March 2000 / March 2001: concurrently, Jay and I organised a field-course to the Campi Flegrei for Royal Holloway’s undergraduate Geography students. The students loved the experience and we also managed to test out some crucial environmental field techniques. Four students came back to research their dissertations, studying the fumaroles in the Solfatara; rare blue-green algae; micro-mammals and ancient lake deposits.
November 2000 - July 2001: work placements were found through the EU’s “Leonardo da Vinci” programme to cover the living costs of Annie Smith (UCL Conservation MSc), Tom Wigglesworth (UCL Conservation MSc), Gemma Swindle (Royal Holloway Geography BSc), and David Reid (Univeristy of Paisley Environmental Studies BSc) for seven months. Their contribution was crucial in that they developed a multidisciplinary method (MEFISTO) for assessing the geological, ecological, historical and aesthetic landscape attributes of the Campi Flegrei. MEFISTO stands for “Method For the Integrated Surveying of the TerritOry”. The name is inspired by Virgil’s reference to the Campi Flegrei as the entrance to hell.
May-July 2001 / April-July 2002: 54 Earthwatch volunteers helped Annie, Tom, Gemma, David, Jay and I (in 2001), and Debbie, Iain, Ben, Peter, Mauro, Manu, Jay and I (in 2002), to collect a massive multimedia terrestrial and marine landscape information system comprising over 5 hours of video, 600 digital images, 300 water-quality measurements, and 2000 data sheets (proformas). These profromas include information on a site’s characteristics (including many wonderful hand-drawn sketches), accessibility, protection status and aesthetic attributes. Over this time, the volunteers also modified MEFISTO into a technique that can be used by people of all ages and backgrounds.
The Future:
There are still some areas that need assessing, including the trail network and the underwater realm, so the partnership with Earthwatch will continue. However, the project has reached a bottle-neck in that this massive amount of data now has to be inputted into a web-based Campi Flegrei Integrated Management System (CFIMS). My lectureship means that CFIMS has a safe home for many years to come, but I am now looking for funds to hire a research assistant to get the site up and running and develop it in a way that will allow stakeholders in the Campi Flegrei to update it from any computer with internet access. I am also trying to engage school teachers and their students, both at local and international level, to keep monitoring the amazing landscape of the Campi Flegrei through CFIMS. Requests for funding have been submitted, so watch this space…..