The United Nations 2030 Agenda is a plan designed to encourage prosperity that is respectful of the planet and its inhabitants. The Agenda will help introduce the concept of education for sustainability (EfS) to a wider population in order to promote inter- and trans-disciplinary knowledge about sustainability. Connecting Earth Sciences (ES) with sustainability allows us to deal with the ethical dimensions and the social implications of this field. The belief is that improving the delivery of knowledge around sustainability issues will make visible the potential of ES education as a key component of EfS. The aim of this paper is to understand whether the young Italian ES community has sufficient knowledge of and a shared interest in, sustainability. The conviction is that awareness of these topics among the younger generations is fundamental to building a new pedagogical paradigm. This study shows the results of a survey taken by participants of BeGeo 2021, the Italian national congress dedicated to young geoscientists, held in Napoli in October 2021. The majority of respondents had limited knowledge about sustainability, and only a few had attended academic activities that included these topics. Nonetheless, the importance of sustainability is well recognized and there is a great need to increase the number of activities connected to EfS.

This paper represents the first regional-scale investigation in the Piedmont Po plain about the relationship between groundwater temperature (GWT) and climate variability. The understanding of relationships between air temperature (AT) and GWT is really important, especially in the context of global climate change. The aim of this investigation is to study the relationship between GWT and AT over a 10-year time period (from 2010 to 2019) to analyse how these two parameters interrelate and to evaluate possible trends. To carry out this study, basic statistic interpolations were performed on both parameters to facilitate comparison. Both AT and GWT showed an increase over the observed decade with a more pronounced growth of the AT; this allow to state that GWT is more resilient to climate change than AT. However, some areas in the Piedmont plain showed a behaviour that partially deviated from the standard trend observe for the majority of the region. These areas were influenced by particular anthropic factors (for example the paddy fields in the Novara plain) or natural elements (as the monitoring wells in the “Canavese” area, located downstream of melting glaciers, or the wells located close to the Tanaro River). Moreover, this study wanted to stress the importance of the knowledge of the localization in wells of the instruments for the GWT measurement, to have the most accurate and comparable data. It was proved that as the depth increased, the maximum and minimum peaks of the GWT shifted in time respect to the maximum and minimum peaks of the AT, and, in addition, the GWT fluctuation in the bottom part of the aquifer was milder than the fluctuation observed in the most superficial part. Further investigations will be conducted in future in Piedmont plain areas with different behavior, in order to better understand their dynamics and the factors that may influence GWT and how they are affected by climate change.

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The analysis of the time-series of groundwater level are extremely important to observe the behaviours of groundwater over time and to identify any critical situations. The studied area is an agricultural district characterised by paddy fields, located in the eastern part of Piedmont, on the border with Lombardy. In this area long time-series of groundwater level, starting from the 1960s, have been collected in 16 wells. Water table data have a good completeness (in the majority of the cases >90%). Firstly, the groundwater hydrodynamic behaviour, based on water table levels, was investigated to highlight the response of groundwater to the recharge. A basic statistical analysis was performed (mean, median, standard deviation, maximum, minima), and then trends of water table levels were evaluated in order to better observe the long-term behaviour of groundwater. These analyses allowed to observe a groundwater hydrodynamic behaviour characterised by a repeating annual pattern (minimum in February/March and maximum in August/September) in correspondence to the period of irrigation. Moreover, trend analysis highlighted the presence of both wells with a decreasing water table (with maximum lowering of 4.3 m in 60 years) and wells with an increasing water table (with maximum rises of 2.8 m in 35 years). Furthermore, in most cases, it can be observed that all three trends analysed agree on being positive or negative. Future insights will be the comparison of these long time-series with the meteorological data, and the investigation of other factors (e.g. anthropic withdrawal, variations of cultivation practices and irrigation, geology of the subsoil) to better understand the causes of the water table fluctuations and trends.

We very much appreciate and thank Andrea Fildani and Angela Hessler for their comment [...]