SHARE Stelvio

SHARE Stelvio is a three-year research program funded by the Lombardy Region through the Lombardy Foundation for the Environment (FLA) and the EvK2CNR Committee. The project's goal is to analyze and quantify the impacts of climate change on ice and water resources within Lombardy’s largest protected area, the Stelvio National Park (covering approximately 600 km²).

The project is part of the broader international environmental monitoring program called SHARE (Stations at High Altitude for Research on the Environment), spearheaded by EvK2CNR. This initiative involves collecting atmospheric, cryospheric, and hydrological data across various mountain regions globally, with the data often shared in real-time with the scientific community, technical experts, and policymakers.

Project Details

Throughout the three years of research, scientists from three CNR institutes (ISAC, ISE, and IRSA) and various Lombard universities (the University of Milan, Università Cattolica, University of Insubria, and the Polytechnic University of Milan) collaborated to collect and interpret data in the glaciated sectors of Stelvio National Park. This park contains some of Italy’s largest glaciers, such as the Forni Glacier (11 km²), and extensive permafrost areas with ice embedded in rocks and soil. These frozen assets are vital sources of water that sustain streams, rivers, and lakes, providing a significant water supply for the mid and lower valleys, supporting energy production, and mitigating summer water scarcity. They are therefore invaluable to the Lombardy Region, in addition to being a major draw for alpine tourism.
The CNR-ISE specifically conducted numerous research activities focusing on water resources, which are both essential to the ecosystem and highly sensitive indicators of ongoing climate change.
In Stelvio National Park, there are 116 lakes with a surface area exceeding 800 m² (as of 2007 data), making this one of the most lake-dense regions in the entire Alpine range—an ideal setting to study the impacts of climate change and other human factors on water resources. The monitoring of hydrochemical parameters and two biotic groups (macroinvertebrates and diatoms)—which are sensitive to changes in water and atmospheric chemistry and can indicate the ecological quality of water resources—revealed unique features in these waters. They exhibit extreme chemical composition variability even in small areas, and their biotic composition shifts in response to external pressures, such as weather and climate factors or the atmospheric transport and deposition of pollutants.

Additional Achievements

The joint effort between CNR-IRSA, the Brugherio Unit, and our institute resulted in the first comprehensive lake registry of the park, which documents not only their geographical characteristics but also their physical, chemical, and ecological traits. By combining this information with satellite imagery and bibliographic research, the researchers were able to reconstruct the evolution of Stelvio Park's lakes over the past 50 years.
In addition to high-altitude water studies, the SHARE Stelvio Project facilitated numerous interdisciplinary studies that provided a holistic view of the area’s evolution.

Key Findings Include

• A 40% reduction in glacial area over the past 50 years, alongside the discovery of a fossilized tree trunk at 2,400 meters altitude, approximately 4,000 years old. This indicates that while recent glacial fluctuations are driven by human impact, similar changes have occurred historically due to climate factors.
• During permafrost studies at an altitude of 3,000 meters, a record depth of -235 meters was reached through drilling, expanding knowledge on the permafrost’s impact on high-altitude hydrogeology. It was previously believed that Alpine permafrost thickness did not exceed 100 meters. Data analysis will help reconstruct the Alpine climate history of the past 200–300 years—an unprecedented achievement for such high altitudes in Europe.
• The development of a meteorological-climate model to provide predictive scenarios for cryosphere evolution.
• High-altitude air quality monitoring to assess the impact of pollutants such as Black Carbon and ozone, emitted locally/regionally (Valtellina / Val Cedec / Po Valley).

Conclusions

While these findings provide a significant basis for assessing the current state of resources within the park, further research and investigation are still essential. High-altitude waters are a critical component of the alpine landscape, a major attraction for promoting tourism, and a highly effective indicator of global changes. It is therefore crucial to maintain ongoing monitoring to explore potential effects of human impact on biodiversity and the ecosystem services these environments can provide.