Biodiversity in the Lagoon of Venice

The project ‘Biodiversity in the Lagoon of Venice’ is coordinated by CNR-ISMAR within the Biodiversity Gateway (https://www.biodiversitygateway.it/) promoted by the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC), the national centre committed to studying and preserving ecosystems and biodiversity.

This project proposes a didactic itinerary that will take place during the 2024/2025 school year in collaboration with the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia – Museo di Storia Naturale Giancarlo Ligabue and the Sestante cooperative society of Venice.

It is aimed at primary schools (second cycle) and first and second grade secondary schools.

The aim of the course is to introduce the concept of biodiversity into the students’ cultural landscape by making them understand why it is important to preserve it, how it contributes to maintaining natural balances and how it is threatened. The Venice Lagoon represents a natural laboratory for studying changing biodiversity, as a mosaic of environments in continuous transformation due to both natural and anthropic forcing at different scales.

The course is divided into 3 phases that take place during the school year:

Classroom meeting: in the period from October to December 2024.
This meeting lasts one hour and is conducted by the Sestante educators in the classes taking part in the project. Its purpose is to introduce the concept of biodiversity and theoretically prepare for subsequent meetings;
Workshop at the Natural History Museum: in the period from December 2024 to February 2025.
The two-hour meeting involves observations and experiments with different methods and times according to age group:
- Primary school: ‘The lagoon a puzzle of environments’
- Secondary school I grade: ‘Together for the blue planet’
- Secondary school grade II: ‘Biodiversity: different but connected’;
Lagoon outing and workshop at the BSG: in the period from April to May 2025. This meeting includes a boat tour in the lagoon with the eco-friendly boat Sestante di Venezia. Observations and sampling will take place, which will then be analysed at the Biodiversity Gateway located at the CNR-ISMAR Institute in Venice. The embarkation and return point will be in Venice near the S. Lucia train station. The outing will take place from 9 a.m. to approximately 4 p.m. During the trip and visit, depending on the age group, educational workshops will be held on the ecology of the lagoon, benthos, algae, phytoplankton and microplastics.

Educational content and workshops are differentiated according to age groups; the use of the iNaturalist app will also be introduced to enable an active role in learning about the biodiversity that surrounds us.

In addition to the activity with students, there will be four one-and-a-half-hour meetings dedicated to families with children aged 5 to 8, entitled ‘We are all different’.

The meetings will include animated stories, small theatrical games of movement and imagination, and observation of naturalistic samples to talk about the variety of the natural world and its importance in all ecosystems in funny and participatory way. Calendar of meetings: Sunday 3 November 2024 | 2.30 p.m., Sunday 12 January 2025 | 2.30 p.m., Sunday 16 March 2025 | 2.30 p.m., Sunday 11 May 2025 | 2 p.m. For more information visit the dedicated page on the Natural History Museum website