[A brief history about the ALPI project]

Abstract

[Conceived by the National Ringing Centre ISPRA and MUSE (Trento, formerly MTSN), the Alps Project was launched in 1997 in order to understand the post-breeding migration strategies of birds across the Italian Alps. The project is realized thanks to the support offered by MUSE and several institutions at a local scale, not to mention the collaboration of over one hundred ringers. In more than twenty years, 40 stations located in sites of passage (alpine and pre-alpine passes) and stop-over (valley floors and slopes) have taken part in the project, leading to a dataset of 666,471 ringed individuals and 191 species (as to 2017). After a first exploratory phase (1997-2002), in which the migration was investigated in its many aspects of specific composition and spatial-temporal variation, the project has been restricted to a smaller number of stations since 2007. Those stations are characterized by working in a standardized and continuous way during the whole period (August-November) or during the migration period of the intra-Palearctic species (end of September-October). In this paper we describe the aims, protocols and organizational aspects of the project, with a special focus on monitoring trends and changes in the long-term phenology. This ongoing project (2021) is part of the ISPRA national ringing plan to monitor bird migration across the country].   [Article in Italian]