Italian biological monitoring of freshwaters, data sharing and acidification indices tool

The Italian assessment of acidification concerns the collection of water chemistry, diatoms, and benthic macroinvertebrates in 2019 and 2020 in lakes to meet the National Emission Ceilings Directive (NECD). The focus was to assess the chemical and biological responses to reduced surface water acidification and identify suitable biological indices for Italian sites. In the last decades, within the EU there has been a strong commitment by the Commission to increase the availability of environmental data and promote data sharing. Our proposal is thus, within the several freshwater monitoring programs envisaged by international and national Directives and Plans, to share the tools developed in Italy to facilitate the sharing of the data obtained at a national and an international level by each Member State. In particular, we focused on high altitude freshwater ecosystems, which have been identified as sensitive and reliable monitoring sites to assess the response of freshwater biota to air pollution.