Special Session 14

SPECIAL SESSION #14

Angela Pomaro

National Research Council - Institute of Marine Sciences, Italy

• angela.pomaro@cnr.it

Pier Francesco Moretti

National Research Council - Department of Environmental Sciences and Technologies, Italy

• pierfrancesco.moretti@cnr.it

Giancarlo De Gasperis

Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

• giancarlo.degasperis@uniroma1.it

Antonio Giorgini

National Research Council - National Institute of Optics, Italy

• antonio.giorgini@cnr.it

Lorenzo Brezzi

University of Padova, Italy

• lorenzo.brezzi@unipd.it

The marine environment is a complex system composed of physical, chemical, and biological variables. Human activities significantly impact ocean ecosystem services and environmental status, involving diverse interconnected agents within a coupled human-natural system. Acoustic measurements provide valuable insights into energy states and transfers within marine ecosystems.

This session will explore the information content of underwater soundscapes to monitor the status and dynamics of marine environments. The session will foster proposals for indicators of ecosystem status based on the study of the underwater soundscape.

The session will investigate the biological implications of acoustic monitoring on marine biodiversity, species behavior, and ecosystem health. Additionally, underwater ambient noise highlights the signatures of physical processes on acoustic measurements and their potential as indicators of energy transfer within the ecosystem, such as air-sea interactions and gas exchange mechanisms. The session will focus on underwater acoustic signals as efficient information carriers for energy transport and communication in marine environments.

We invite researchers and practitioners to discuss the implications of these findings and explore innovative approaches to acoustic monitoring in marine environments.

Angela Pomaro, is a researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy, in Venice. Graduated in civil engineering at the University of Padua, she develops research activities with particular interest on wave climate studies focusing on the understanding of the interdependencies of local meteo- oceanographic conditions with large-scale circulation patterns and on the definition of metrics for the analysis of long-term time-series of measured and model data. She has been responsible for the management of the CNR research infrastructure Acqua Alta Oceanographic Tower (AAOT), located in the North Adriatic Sea, including the thorough renovation program performed in 2017-2018. She has coordinated several dissemination activities, also in the field of art and science, with a particular interest on accessibility. In this field, she is also co-chairing the EuroGOOS Ocean Literacy Working Group, in which she also participates as representative of the National Research Council of Italy, to upscale the national efforts in Europe and contribute to broader Ocean Literacy efforts globally. She is currently participating in a doctoral program in DataScience at Sapienza University of Rome and she is the Principal Investigator of the PRIN 2022 project “SEAmPhonia - An innovative enlightening approach to enable modelling of marine ecosystems by the acoustic 3D field”, a strongly interdisciplinary project that combines knowledge from the fields of solar physics, optics and oceanography for the development of an innovative approach for the study of marine ecosystems through the analysis of the three-dimensional acoustic field of the underwater soundscape.

Pier Francesco Moretti, is a physicist with two PhDs, more than 90 international publications in helioseismology, material, marine and political sciences. His skills in research were mainly focused in spectroscopy, data analysis and innovative technologies. He has been involved in many international projects and Governmental Boards, working also in USA, Antarctica, Austria and Belgium. He has been responsible of the Office for the International Activities of the CNR Department of Earth and Environment, and appointed also as scientific officer at the CNR Liaison Office in Brussels for the support to policy decisions. He has been vice-chair of the Research Working Party of the EU Competitiveness Council during the Italian Presidency of the European Union. He designed and coordinates an innovative training course for decision and negotiation processes (school4sid.cnr.it) and a foresight initiative for the development of a new generation of materials. Recently, he proposed an observing strategy and an experimental set-up for the acquisition and analysis of underwater acoustic signals and their role in the equilibrium of the ecosystems. See also www.pierfrancescomoretti.eu.

Giancarlo De Gasperis, is an Italian cosmologist, Associate Professor in the Physics Department at Sapienza University of Rome. His research focuses on cosmology, with an emphasis on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). He studies CMB B-mode polarization to explore early universe dynamics and analyzes primordial non-Gaussianity through advanced data techniques. He contributed to major cosmological projects, including the Planck satellite, where he worked on CMB data analysis, the Large Scale Polarization Explorer (LSPE), aiding in mission simulations and component separation, and the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from Integrated Neutral Gas Observations (BINGO) project, supporting data analysis for baryon acoustic oscillations via the 21-cm hydrogen line. Additionally, his work includes statistical analysis of stochastic fields to characterize cosmological signals.

Antonio Giorgini, received is PhD in Physics in 2009 at University of Naples Federico II with a thesis on atom interferometry. Graduated (magna cum laude) in Physics in 2005 at the same Institution, he is currently researcher at National Research Council (Italy), National Institute of Optics (CNR-INO). His present research activity is focused on optical sensors, optical micro-resonators, surface plasmon resonance chemical sensors, fiber sensors, laser spectroscopy for fundamental and applied purposes. Recent investigations concern non-linear opto-mechanic effects in liquid micro-resonators. Atomic laser spectroscopy and time-frequency metrology on cold atoms constitute his scientific background. He spent few years at the Physics Dept. of University of Firenze for his PhD research, and, later, received a research grant at European Laboratory For Non Linear Spectroscopy (LENS), Italy. As undergraduate student he contributed to the development of the detector control system for the ATLAS experiment at CERN.

Dr. Lorenzo Brezzi, is a researcher in geotechnical engineering at the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (DICEA) at the University of Padova. His work focuses on numerical modeling of landslides, debris flows, and geotechnical monitoring using advanced techniques such as fiber optic sensors, photogrammetry, and image processing. After his Bachelor's and Master’s degrees in Civil Engineering at the University of Padova, working on numerical analysis of residual stress in multi-pass welding, in 2016 he completed his Ph.D. with a dissertation on calibration strategies for depth-integrated numerical models in landslide propagation. A significant aspect of Dr. Brezzi’s research is the application of distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) technology for real-time monitoring of geotechnical structures and reinforcement systems. His work includes the use of fiber optic sensors to assess strain development in passive reinforcements, slope stabilization systems, and critical infrastructure such as bridges and dams. Through these innovative monitoring techniques, he has contributed to improving risk assessment and maintenance strategies for geotechnical and civil engineering applications. His expertise also extends to numerical modeling using advanced computational techniques such as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and the Finite Element Method (FEM). He has applied these methods to simulate landslide propagation, analyze soil-structure interaction, and assess geotechnical risks. Additionally, he has worked extensively with photogrammetric monitoring, utilizing terrestrial and drone-based techniques for high-resolution mapping and displacement analysis of unstable slopes. Dr. Brezzi has collaborated on numerous industry projects, including fiber optic monitoring for infrastructure safety and landslide risk assessment. He is an active member of the FABRE Consortium, contributing to bridge and viaduct safety assessments under Italian infrastructure risk guidelines.