Eighth International Symposium "Monitoring of Mediterranean Coastal Areas. Problems and Measurement Techniques"

The 8th International Symposium "Monitoring of Mediterranean Coastal Areas. Problems and Measurements Techniques" was organized by CNR-IBE in collaboration with FCS Foundation, and Natural History Museum of the Mediterranean and under the patronage of University of Florence, Accademia dei Geogofili, Tuscany Region and Livorno Province. It is the occasion in which scholars can illustrate and exchange their activities and innovative proposals, with common aims to promote actions to preserve coastal marine environment. Considering Symposium interdisciplinary nature, the Scientific Committee, underlining this holistic view of Nature, decided to celebrate Alexander von Humboldt; a nature scholar that proposed the organic and inorganic nature's aspects as a single system. It represents a sign of continuity considering that in-presence Symposium could not be carried out due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Subjects are related to coastal topics: morphology; flora and fauna; energy production; management and integrated protection; geography and landscape, cultural heritage and environmental assets, legal and economic aspects.2019 was the 250th year since the birth of Alexander von Humboldt, a nature scholar. He was born in Germany and lived in many parts of the world, giving a unified vision of this, where organic and inorganic nature form a single system, whose manifestations are all connected to each other.Since our Symposium, with its interdisciplinarity, intends to demonstrate, edition after edition, this thesis we seemed appropriate to remember the theorist of this holistic view of Nature. Since the Symposium is held in even years, and in 2019 it was not foreseen, we intended to take the occasion to celebrate Humboldt in 2020 edition. It would have been interesting to remember him during the traditional three days of Symposium but unfortunately could not be carried out due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. The pandemic also led to a reduction of the works; from the approximately 150 works selected by the Scientific Committee, in these Proceedings only half of them are present for obvious reasons. In any case, it seemed appropriate, giving a clear sign of continuity, to publish the works that the authors were able to complete in this difficult period. In this reduced edition, the celebration of Humboldt was ensured by F. Benincasa, M. De Vincenzi, G. Fasano with a note that we place before the works of the different Sessions.