The CSMON-LIFE campaigns

Originally, the activities of CSMON-LIFE were articulated in 5 reporting campaigns:

1. Climate change, which aimed at organizing data on species that are indicative of climate change, and to produce predictive models of their expansion, as a proxy for the climate change. In this way, it would be made clear that, as a result of climate change, species and ecosystems will also suffer consequences, which will necessarily havean impact on humans as well.
2. Alien species, which aimed at highlighting the consequences of the presence of invasive alien species in Italy, and how much it is necessary to address the problem as soon as possible to safeguard biodiversity.
3. Rare species, to make the general public aware of the fragility of some species and of some ecosystems, increasingly threatened by human activities, and by the ever increasing withdrawal of resources from the environment.
4. Lichens and Anthropization, to highlight how the impact of pollution can make our cities unhealthy environments in which to live.
5. Sea and Fisheries, to highlight the impact that alien species have on marine ecosystems, and in particular on the fishing economy, which is based on the subtle balance between sustainable harvesting and over-exploitation of fish stocks.

This organization, during the project, proved to be ineffective. In fact, to send an observation of a species, citizens had first to know in which campaign it was inserted. This created many difficulties, and produced several negative feedbacks. For this reason, the original campaigns have disappeared from the app, and have been replaced by two campaign groups:

1. campaigns by species group (amphibians, plants, lichens, etc.), so that citizens can easily understand in which group the species they observe is included
2. guest campaigns, developed for project stakeholders, and for special events (as in the case of Urban Nature)

This new organization has found a positive response from citizens, who have consequently contributed more enthusiastically to the project activities. However, the original campaigns continued, and produced the expected results at the end of the project's financed phase. All project campaigns will continue for many years after project's conclusion.

Study area

The original study area consisted of the two Regions Lazio (for terrestrial organisms) and Puglia (for marine organisms). The main efforts of the project in terms of practical activities (BioBlitz, ScopriNatura) have in fact been carried out in these two Regions. However, from the pages of the various CSMON-LIFE campaigns, it can be seen that more than 50% of the observations collected during the project have come from all over the rest of Italy, and in some cases, even from abroad.

This is mainly due to two factors:

1. the extensive coverage on television and national press that the project has enjoyed. Having reached only over 15 million citizens in Italy thanks to the mass-media has allowed us to involve many citizens even outside the borders of Lazio and Puglia, and to aggregate new stakeholders during the project.
2. the publication of the project App for free on the main online stores has meant that the number of downloads grew all over the country, without distinction by administrative Region.

As a result, the project has collected (and will continue to collect) reports from all over Italy, without limitations.