• The Atlas of unburnable oil

  • Impact of resource extraction activities
    in tropical systems

  • Dynamics of the Earth System
    in greenhouse climates

  • Co-evolution of natural and socials
    systems through time

  • Science can bring a better and
    more sustainable future for all

  • We go to incredible places
    to do impossible things

  • Interdisciplinary advanced research

Research on Anthropogenic Impacts in Natural Systems and Planetary Health

ExIt - ImpactAnt research is on global change.

We study the impact of human activities and Extractive Industries on the natural environment and Planetary Health.

The approach we adopt is highly interdisciplinary, combining tools from envirionmental forensics, environmental epidemiology, ecology, veterinary science, remote sensing, and citizen science. We bridge the natural and social sciences to study the Global Change from an integrated perspective.

To achieve this, we have 2 complementary strategies:

  1. characterize the health of the ecosystems and human populations and their interactions
  2. characterize the natural dynamics of the Earth system components
  3. find out how these dynamics, and the associated processes, are transformed in response to human activities from an Environmental Justice perspective.

We target different spatial and temporal scales to have access to areas and time periods with different levels of anthropogenic impacts (e.g. remote areas, past climate changes).

 

Featured Projects

The Environmental monitoRIng through Civic engAgement (ERICA) is an Erasmus+ project that started in Novembre 2023. ERICA's main objective is to improve citizens’ environmental awareness and civic engagement through the development of a new educational methodology on citizen science for environmental monitoring. Citizens will gain the capacity to initiate and manage citizen science initiatives, collect and assess environmental information, and convert such data into "actionable knowledge" that is perceived as useful and immediately applicable by citizens, local authorities, academic institutions, and NGOs.

Subsistence hunting is a crucial source of protein for rural and indigenous communities in tropical rainforests worldwide. However, previous studies suggest that lead-based ammunition may pose serious health risks to these populations. The INDILEAD project will investigate this issue by analyzing blood lead levels in indigenous communities from the tropical forests of Cameroon (Baka people), Peru, and Indonesia (Punan-Tubu people). Additionally, the study will identify key exposure pathways to better understand the risks associated with lead contamination.

January 2019 to September 2022

Up to 11% of worlds rainforests overlap with conventional oil and natural gas reserves. In this context, the occurrence of petroleum-extraction activities in the Amazon and their impact on the environment and those indigenous populations living in the vicinity of these areas has generated a great deal of controversy. A major cause for concern has been the reported high levels of oil-related lead in the blood of members of remote indigenous communities. On a different vein, the use of lead-based ammunition, which in 2003 had a global consumption of 120,000 tons, is a very important source of direct lead release to soil at the global level. This study aims at providing new insights into lead (and other heavy metals) pollution in remote areas of the planet, and at establishing their potential sources.

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