Phd in ENVIRONMENTAL AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY

email: marcello.vitale@uniroma1.it
phone: +390649912901
building: CU022
room: 9

Primary research interests lie in the combined effects of tropospheric ozone and environmental stress factors on plants (semi-natural and crops) and forest Mediterranean ecosystems. I investigated plant physiological processes, symptom expression of ozone visible injury and I used these data to assess the risk of tropospheric ozone on forest vegetation employing ozone flux modelling. Following the first approaches to modelling, my particular interest lies in finding new non-linear methodological approaches based on the mathematics-statistical basis for the assessment of functional rules of some physiological processes such as stomatal conductance behaviour as referred as a key-parameter for controlling atmosphere-plant interactions. Efforts have been done for applying several non-linear techniques, such as Path analysis, Neural Net Analysis, non-linear regression models, to different physiological variables of plants responding to the variation of the independent climatic variables and air pollutants.
Different deterministic models have been developed to respond to several necessities as the assessment of net primary productivity of a Mediterranean forest by simulation of physiological processes responding to an increase of air temperature; hydro-geological models taking into account soil properties and environmental variables at aiming to assess the water availability either in the water table level or superficial level (root level) for determining potential plant production in limiting environments (savannah, semi-arid and arid lands), also considering the grazing pressure in time.
Different scale factors have been used in the modelling practices to up-scale or down-scale several functional variables by using the allometric theory of West, Brown and Enquist, leaf area index (LAI) as calculated in function of plant productivity, some remotely sensed products as NDVI or phenology product coming from MODIS satellite data and implemented in deterministic models as time-based functions. The acquisition of modelling techniques (quick basic, visual basic and object-oriented programs as Stella 9 and Simile), following the implementation of a deterministic model based on the big-leaf approach and then of a process. based model, for calculating net primary production, canopy transpiration and stomatal conductance to water vapour, and applying the spatial Analyst module of ArcGIS software, allowed the spatial representation of these physiological variables. This approach opened potential applications when deterministic models (temporal trends but not spatial representations) were relieved with Cellular Automata (CA) models and the more useful Geographical Automata System (GAS).