"Hang in There!": Mental Health in a Sample of the Italian Civil Protection Volunteers during the COVID-19 Health Emergency.

Few studies have been conducted on civil volunteers and their emotional conditions concerning the current COVID-19 pandemic. The present study aimed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 emergency on the mental health (general well-being, depression level, and post-traumatic distress), coping strategies, and training needs in an Italian sample of 331 Civil Protection volunteers of the L'Aquila province, during the first nationwide "lockdown" (8 March-3 June 2020). The rate of respondents to the online survey was limited (11.5%), presumably because displaying distress would be considered a sign of "weakness", making volunteers unable to do their jobs. More than 90% of the volunteers showed good mental health conditions and a wide utilization of positive coping strategies, with the less experienced displaying better emotional conditions compared to colleagues with 10 or more years of experience. The type of emergency, the relatively few cases of contagion and mortality in the territory compared to the rest of Italy, and the sense of helping the community, together with the awareness of their group identity, could have contributed to the reported well-being. These results may help to identify the needs of volunteers related to this new "urban" emergency to improve both their technical and emotional skills.

Evaluating the impact of hydrometeorological conditions on E. coli concentration in farmed mussels and clams: experience in Central Italy.

Highly populated coastal environments receive large quantities of treated and untreated wastewater from human and industrial sources. Bivalve molluscs accumulate and retain contaminants, and their analysis provides evidence of past contamination. Rivers and precipitation are major routes of bacteriological pollution from surface or sub-surface runoff flowing into coastal areas. However, relationships between runoff, precipitation, and bacterial contamination are site-specific and dependent on the physiographical characteristics of each catchment. In this work, we evaluated the influence of precipitation and river discharge on molluscs' Escherichia coli concentrations at three sites in Central Italy, aiming at quantifying how hydrometeorological conditions affect bacteriological contamination of selected bivalve production areas. Rank-order correlation analysis indicated a stronger association between E. coli concentrations and the modelled Pescara River discharge maxima (r = 0.69) than between E. coli concentration and rainfall maxima (r = 0.35). Discharge peaks from the Pescara River caused an increase in E. coli concentration in bivalves in 87% of cases, provided that the runoff peak occurred 1-6 days prior to the sampling date. Precipitation in coastal area was linked to almost 60% of cases of E. coli high concentrations and may enhance bacterial transportation offshore, when associated with a larger-scale weather system, which causes overflow occurrence.

Changing hydrological conditions in the Po basin under global warming.

The Po River is a crucial resource for the Italian economy, since 40% of the gross domestic product comes from this area. It is thus crucial to quantify the impact of climate change on this water resource in order to plan for future water use. In this paper a mini ensemble of 8 hydrological simulations is completed from 1960 to 2050 under the A1B emission scenario, by using the output of two regional climate models as input (REMO and RegCM) at two different resolutions (25 km-10 km and 25 km-3 km). The river discharge at the outlet point of the basin shows a change in the spring peak of the annual cycle, with a one month shift from May to April. This shift is entirely due to the change in snowmelt timing which drives most of the discharge during this period. Two other important changes are an increase of discharge in the wintertime and a decrease in the fall from September to November. The uncertainty associated with the winter change is larger compared to that in the fall. The spring shift and the fall decrease of discharge imply an extension of the hydrological dry season and thus an increase in water stress over the basin. The spatial distributions of the discharge changes are in agreement with what is observed at the outlet point and the uncertainty associated with these changes is proportional to the amplitude of the signal. The analysis of the changes in the anomaly distribution of discharge shows that both the increases and decreases in seasonal discharge are tied to the changes in the tails of the distribution, i.e. to the increase or decrease of extreme events.