Lake systems are essential for the environment, the biosphere, and humans but are highly impacted by anthropogenic activities accentuated by climate change. Understanding how lake ecosystems change due to human impacts and natural forces is crucial to managing their current state and possible future restoration. The high sensitivity of shallow closed lakes to natural and anthropogenic forcing makes these lacustrine ecosystems highly prone to variations in precipitation and sedimentation processes. These variation processes, occurring in the water column, produce geochemical markers or proxies recorded in lake sedimentary archives. This study investigated specific proxies on high-resolution sedimentary archives (2–3 years resolution) of the Trasimeno lake (Central Italy). The Trasimeno lake underwent three different hydrological phases during the twentieth century due to several fluctuations induced mainly by human activities and climate change. The Trasimeno lake, a large and shallow basin located in the Mediterranean area, is a good case study to assess the effects of intense anthropogenic activity related to agriculture, tourism, industry, and climate changes during the Anthropocene. The aim is to identify the main characteristics of the main sedimentary events in the lake during the last 150 years, determining the concentrations of major and trace elements, the amount of organic matter, and the mineralogical composition of the sediments. This type of work demonstrates that studying sediment archives at high resolution is a viable method for reconstructing the lake’s history through the evolution/trends of the geochemical proxies stored in the sediment records. This effort makes it possible to assess past anthropogenic impact and, under the objectives of the European Green Deal (zero-pollution ambition for a toxic-free environment), to monitor, prevent, and remedy pollution related to soil and water compartments. Graphical abstract

Environmental context We present a chemical characterisation of the seasonal snowpack sampled for four consecutive years at the Calderone, the southernmost glacier still surviving in peninsular Italy. This debris covered glacier recently split into two little ice bodies, whose evolution could be influenced by the snowpack properties. In particular the impact of long-range aerosol advections on concentrations of impurities in the snowpack over the local background is discussed. Rationale The Calderone Glacier (Central Apennine, Gran Sasso d’Italia mountain group) is the southernmost glacial apparatus in Europe, split into two glacierets (Upper and Lower Calderone) since the end of the last millennium. Because of its location and altitude, this site is mainly characterised by the long-range transport of air masses which arise from different Mediterranean source regions. Therefore, the seasonal snowpack’s chemistry is strongly affected by the dry and wet deposition of contaminants associated with anthropogenic and natural sources. Methodology In the present study, the seasonal snowpack stratified on the Calderone glacier has been characterised for four consecutive years (2017–2020) in the same monitoring site (2700 m asl), where a snow pit has been dug yearly, to observe the modification of chemical and physical properties depending on local and long-range atmospheric contributions. We determined the concentrations and fluxes of major inorganic ions (MIs) by ion chromatography and of 31 trace elements (TEs) by triple quadrupole ICP-MS. Results Major and trace element concentration profiles along the snowpack allowed to discriminate the snow layers contaminated by long range advections from the uncontaminated ones. The uncontaminated snow layers’ concentrations were used to calculate regional background values. The results have been compared to other remote sites to assess their robustness. Discussion Different source contributions have been recognised using enrichment factors for the trace elements, particularly crustal, marine and anthropogenic. Deposited atmospheric aerosols, found in the snowpack as distinct layers generated during intense air mass advections, have been correlated to these contributions.

Anthropogenic trace metal contamination has significantly increased and has caused many hazardous consequences for the ecosystems and human health. The Terni basin valley (Central Italy) shows a heavy load of pollutants from industrial activities, while the characteristic orography structure of the valley favours air stagnation, thus limiting air pollution dispersal. The present study conducted in 2014 aimed to determine the concentration of ten metals in five species of butterflies at nine sites in the Terni valley along a 21-km-long transect, including both relatively pristine and industrial areas. At sites where soil contamination was high for a given metal, such as for chromium as in the case of site 4 (the closest to the steel plant) and for lead as in the case of site 2 (contaminated by a firing range), higher levels of contamination were observed in the tissues of butterflies. We found a correlation between soil contamination and the concentration of Cr, Al and Sr in the tissues of some species of butterflies. The sensitivity to contamination differed among the five species; in particular, Coenonympha pamphilus was generally the species that revealed the highest concentrations of all the ten trace metals at the sites closer to the industrial area. It is known that C. pamphilus is a sedentary species and that its host plants are the Poaceae, capable of accumulating high quantities of metals in their rhizosphere region, thus providing the link with soil contamination. Therefore, monitoring the metal concentration levels in butterflies might be a good indicator and a control tool of environmental quality, specifically in areas affected by high anthropogenic pollution loads linked to a specific source.

We present a survey on the environmental contamination of the Alviano Lake territory (Central Italy) based on Apis mellifera ligustica samples collected in two annual samplings (2019–2020). Concentrations of 30 elements were determined in the whole bees, in the gaster, and in the body without the gaster. The study generally revealed a low level of contamination of the bee tissues. However, As showed higher concentrations than in other rural areas, although lower than in samples from urban and productive areas. On the other hand, despite the environmental context, Hg showed limited contamination levels, with the exception of a single sample. Elemental analysis along the longitudinal axis of the bees’ bodies showed greater and statistically significant presences of V, Al, Be, Pb, Cd, Co, Mn, Ba, and Sr in the gaster. The only exceptions concerned As and S (and to a lesser extent Hg), with higher concentrations found in the body without the gaster. We hypothesise that this selectivity maybe due to the affinity of these elements with S, which is abundant in the proteins of the flight muscles in the insect thorax, which are rich in amino acids containing the –SH group.

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