<p>Coasts are extremely sensitive areas and are internationally considered &#8220;hotspot&#8221; of environmental contamination. The presence of multiple human activities in these areas frequently lead to the potential increase in organic and inorganic pollutants. In particular, industrial and maritime activities, tourism, recreational activities, aquaculture and fishing contribute to the pollutants release in the coastal environments. In this context, northern Latium coastal area (northern Thyrrenian Sea, Italy) hosts several industrial activities of national and international relevance, located in a very restricted seaside area: the Port of Civitavecchia, one of the most important hub for cruise and commercial traffic in the Mediterranean Sea, the Torrevaldaliga Nord coal-fired power plant of the national energy company (ENEL), and the Tirreno Power combined cycle (gas-fueled) power plant. All these activities strongly contribute to the increase of pollutant load to the land as well as marine coastal environment.&#160;For this reason, a research project aimed at understanding the main source for the pollution has been undertaken in the last years. The project is particularly aimed at designing and testing of reliable low-cost devices (Gozzi et al., 2015, 2017) able to provide both the amount and typology of solid particles spread in the environment.</p><p>As a first step, the air quality inside the Civitavecchia harbor has been monitored for six months by measuring the content of PM1, PM2.5, and PM10 simultaneously to environmental parameters such as air temperature and humidity. The sensing station (Della Ventura et al., 2017) was equipped with a filtering set-up able to collect the solid load in the atmosphere with dimension > 400 nm. The filters were periodically removed from the station and studied by combining microscopic (optical and electron), spectroscopic (IR, Raman) and microchemical (SEM-EDS) techniques for a full characterization of microparticles typologies. Collected information, augmented by environmental (wind, rain) data from local broadcasting stations provides a valuable tool for assessing the contribution of anthropic (industrial and maritime) activities to the pollution in this coastal area.</p><p>&#160;</p><p>References</p><p>Gozzi, F., Della Ventura, G., Marcelli, A. (2015) Mobile monitoring of particulate matter: State of art and perspectives. Atmospheric Pollution Research, 7, 228-234. DOI:10.1016/j.apr.2015.09.007.</p><p>Gozzi, F., Della Ventura, G., Marcelli, A., Lucci, F. (2017) Current status of particulate matter pollution in Europe and future perspectives: a review. Journal of Materials and Environmental Science, 8, 1901-1909. ISSN: 2028-2508</p><p>Della Ventura, G., Gozzi, F., Marcelli, A. (2017) The MIAMI project: design and testing of an IoT low-cost device for mobile monitoring of PM and gaseous pollutants. Superstripe Press, Science Series, 12, 41-44, ISBN 9788866830764.</p>
<p><span>The increase in urbanization requires intense energy consumption and causes an increase in emissions from transportation and industrial sources. As a result, a variety of pollutants are released into the atmosphere with negative effects on the health of organisms and ecosystems as well as on human health. In this perspective, coastal areas are considered "hot</span><span>spot</span><span>s" of environmental contamination since they often host multiple human activities. This issue is particularly dramatic close to important maritime hubs, as a matter of fact overall 25% of the world energy consumption (a major source of pollution) is employed for transport, and over 80% of world trade is carried by sea (Gobbi et al. 2020). </span><span>During 2019-2020 we carried out a continuous monitoring of particulate matter in a fixed station to understand the sources of air pollution in the northern Latium coastal area. This area has been selected for the presence of industrial activities located in a few kilometers of coast (Piazzolla et al. 2020). </span><span>The amount and typology of solid particles present in the environment have been assessed by implementing a reliable cost-effective device (Gozzi et al. 2015, 2017) which integrates an optical particle counter and a filtering set-up able to collect particulate matter with dimension > 400 nm (Della Ventura et al. 2017). Filters were periodically removed from the device and recovered microparticles were subjected to microscopic (optical and electron), spectroscopic (IR, Raman), and microchemical (SEM-EDS) characterization. Results were related to the wind speed and direction measured by</span><span>&#160;the </span>Civitavecchia Coastal Environment Monitoring System<span> (</span><span>Bonamano et al. 2015), allowing an evaluation of the contribution of anthropic (industrial and maritime) activities to the pollution in this area.</span></p><p>Bonamano S., Piermattei V., Madonia A., Mendoza F., Pierattini A., Martellucci R., ... <span>& Marcelli M. (2016). The Civitavecchia Coastal Environment Monitoring System (C-CEMS): a new tool to analyze the conflicts between coastal pressures and sensitivity areas. Ocean Science, 12(1).</span><span> DOI 10.5194/os-12-87-2016</span></p><p><span>Della Ventura G., Gozzi F., Marcelli A. (2017) The MIAMI project: design and testing of an IoT lowcost device for mobile monitoring of PM and gaseous pollutants. Superstripe Press, Science Series, 12, 41-44, ISBN 9788866830764</span></p><p>Gobbi G.P., Di Liberto L., Barnaba F. (2020). <span>Impact of port emissions on Eu-regulated and non-regulated air quality indicators: the case of Civitavecchia (Italy). Science of the Total environment, 719. DOI 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134984 </span></p><p><span>Gozzi, F., Della Ventura, G., Marcelli, A. (2015) Mobile monitoring of particulate matter: State of art and perspectives. Atmospheric Pollution Research, 7, 228-234. DOI 10.1016/j.apr.2015.09.007.</span></p><p><span>Gozzi F., Della Ventura G., Marcelli A., Lucci F. (2017) Current status of particulate matter pollution in Europe and future perspectives: a review. Journal of Materials and Environmental Science, 8, 1901-1909. ISSN 2028-2508</span></p><p><span>Piazzolla D., Cafaro V., de Lucia G. A., Mancini E., Scanu S., Bonamano S., ... & Marcelli M. (2020). Microlitter pollution in coastal sediments of the northern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy: microplastics and fly-ash occurrence and distribution. </span>Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 106819. DOI 10.1016/j.ecss.2020.106819</p>
<p>Sound is the most widespread and pervasive kind of anthropogenic energy that human activities introduce into the marine environment. Sound energy input can be highly variable both in time and space, becoming an important part of the total ocean acoustic background. Moreover, the underwater sound plays an ecologically important role in marine ecosystems, being a critical sensory modality for many marine organisms that can be useful for both sensing the environment and communication. With the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) (2008/56/EC, EU 2008), underwater noise has been recognized as pollution and included in the qualitative high-level descriptors to achieve good environmental status, GES.</p><p>During recent years, passive acoustic monitoring in the ocean has become a standard technique across the oceanographic community and is used to address biological, geological and meteorological issues. Due to the highly spatio-temporal variability of the ocean noise, a large number of the observing systems would be needed. Extended marine monitoring would require a reduction in the cost of platforms and instruments, without compromising data quality. Despite, a significant effort has been invested by the scientific community in the development of low-cost PAM recorders, much work still remains. Most of the problems are related to the pressure to which the devices are exposed, the battery pack limits, storage memory limits, and sensibility of the sound sensor once waterproofing and so on.</p><p>Here, we present a low-cost underwater sound recorder for coastal applications developed to be applied in both background noise monitoring and bioacoustic monitoring. This recorder consists of a high-performance USB-based microcontroller development system with an audio adapter that guarantees high audio quality. Additionally, test were conducted using both an ECM (Electret Condenser Microphone) and a MEMS microphone (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) for a wide frequency range recordings to find the better solutions for good data quality. Compact and small in size, it can be easily installed on various oceanographic platforms for different types of sampling.</p><p>Here we present the first results of the laboratory and field tests, comparing our assembled device with a commercial recorder and a pre-calibrated hydrophone. &#160;</p>
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