How it can be enjoyed

The fact sheets dedicated to individual species and the habitat descriptions are conceived as flexible tools, suitable both for use in educational settings and for independent consultation. They can support teaching activities, workshops, and guided educational programs, offering reliable content that can be easily integrated into curricula. At the same time, they are designed for individual use, aimed at anyone who wishes to approach or explore in greater depth, in an informed way, topics related to the biodiversity of the Venice Lagoon, fostering a free, accessible, and personalized learning experience.

To whom it is addressed

The Atlas is aimed at a broad, cross-sectional audience, able to identify with different needs and outlooks. It is a valuable ally for students and teachers, who can explore the lagoon through clear, rigorous and highly visual materials designed to facilitate learning and stimulate curiosity. The Atlas, however, also becomes a working tool for educators, nature guides and extensionists, who find in it reliable, up-to-date and easily shareable content suitable for recounting the complexity of the lagoon without oversimplifying it. But the Atlas also speaks to those who do not have a professional role in education or research: curious citizens, visitors, enthusiasts. For all those who wish to better understand the environment surrounding Venice, the Atlas serves as a discreet and knowledgeable travel companion, capable of making visible and legible what often remains in the background.

Goals

1. Telling the story of the complexity of the Venice lagoon means traversing its environments and recognizing its subtle but decisive differences: from the lagoon margin to the salt marshes, from the shallow beds to the channels, from the emerged lands to the coastal barriers, and to the inlets. Each of these places contributes to defining a dynamic, ever-changing landscape where water, sediment and life intertwine.

2. The Atlas shows how environmental gradients and the different lagoon morphologies give rise to a dense network of micro-habitats, creating the conditions for high biodiversity. L’Atlante mostra come i gradienti ambientali e le diverse morfologie lagunari diano origine a una fitta trama di micro-habitat, creando le condizioni per un’elevata biodiversità.

3. Offering an accessible and scientifically reliable tool for recognizing species and learning to read their ecological role, distribution, and key characteristics. A support designed to navigate the complexity of the lagoon and understand how each organism contributes to the balance of the ecosystem.

What you will learn

The Atlas allows for an informed and in-depth approach to the Venice lagoon, offering different levels of reading. First of all, it allows to learn about the key habitats of the lagoon system and to understand their ecological functions: the filtering role of the lagoon margins, the ability of salt marshes to stabilize sediments, the extraordinary richness of life in the shallow beds. Through accurate illustrations, morphological descriptions and photographs taken in the field, it helps to recognize the most representative species and to distinguish shapes, colors and features that often escape a hasty glance. Each card thus becomes a small gateway to stories of adaptation and coexistence.

The Atlas also invites readers to discover curiosities, behaviors, and strategies of very different organisms—from algae to marine phanerogams, from birds to fish, and extending to mammals, crustaceans, mollusks, and insects—highlighting the richness and diversity of lagoon life. Finally, it provides the tools to understand how human activities and environmental changes affect these delicate ecosystems—from clam farming to channel dredging, elements that interact daily with the balance of the lagoon.

How to use it

The project is designed as a digital journey that takes the reader through seven major environments of the Venice lagoon. Each section is a stage in the journey, a change of scenery that allows the reader to grasp how forms, waters and organisms transform as they move from one habitat to another.

Lagoon margin

The lagoon margin is the threshold of the lagoon: a wide transition zone where fresh river waters meet brackish ones. Reed beds, marshes, and fish valleys draw a rich and productive landscape that is critical for the natural regulation of sediment and nutrients. Here the lagoon breathes and renews itself, welcoming euryhaline fish, migratory birds and a multitude of invertebrates that make the margin areas of the lagoon one of the most vital ecotones in the entire system.

Salt marshes

The salt marshes, small silty islets shaped by currents and sediments, emerge only a few tens of centimeters above mean sea level and are submerged during the most intense tides. Embroidered with halophilic plants and crisscrossed by ghebi and chiari, they are places of refuge and food for fish, crustaceans and waterfowl. Fragile and constantly changing, they are now threatened by erosion and sea rise, but remain irreplaceable elements for the biodiversity and morphological stability of the lagoon.

Shallow beds

The shallow beds constitute the large, shallow submerged areas where suspended particles settle out, improving water quality. In some areas the mudflats surface only during the lowest tides; elsewhere seagrass beds, algal mats and very rich benthic communities extend. These are dynamic environments, true biological hearts of the lagoon, providing nourishment, refuge and growth areas for numerous fish species.

Channels

Channels, natural or man-made, are the arteries of the lagoon. They regulate water exchange and allow navigation, connecting different environments. Their waters, influenced by tides, river inputs and human activities, host communities that vary in depth and currents. Along the banks, gums and hard substrates become habitats for sponges, annelids, bivalves and algae, while dredging and port transformations have changed their forms and balance over time.

Emerged lands

Emerged lands include large and small islands, urban, agricultural and natural spaces. Halophilic grasslands, shrublands, thickets and wild environments provide refuge for birds, amphibians and small mammals. They are lands deeply marked by human intervention – reclamations, embankments, historic settlements such as Venice and its islands – and today face complex challenges such as subsidence, erosion and climate change, while remaining an integral part of the lagoon balance.

Coastal barriers

Coastal barriers are the thin sandy strips that separate the lagoon from the sea. Beaches, dunes and backdune areas arise from the combined action of waves, currents and wind and are home to highly specialized species, such as the prickly sparto and numerous migratory and nesting birds, such as the plover. Fascinating and vulnerable environments, they are exposed to erosion and tourist pressure, which is why they are the focus of protection and renaturalization efforts.

Port inlets

The lagoon inlets represent the points of exchange between sea and lagoon, gateways through which currents, sediments and organisms pass. Always crucial for navigation and trade, today they are also the place where the MOSE works, designed to defend Venice from exceptional tides, are concentrated. Structural transformations make these areas particularly delicate, where needs for protection, functionality and ecological protection are intertwined in complex ways.

Together, these seven sections build a narrative map of the lagoon, helping to read an area in constant flux and understand its extraordinary richness.

The authors

Editorial project coordination:Nicoletta Nesto, Fantina Madricardo, Michol Ghezzo (CNR-ISMAR)

Texts on habitats:
Nicoletta Nesto, Marco Sigovini, Irene Guarneri, Simona Armeli Minicante (CNR-ISMAR), with contributions from Giacomo Cipolato, Luca Scapin, Federico Riccato and Riccardo Fiorin (Laguna Project)

Texts and graphic design of species sheets:
Federico Riccato, Riccardo Fiorin, Giacomo Cipolato, Luca Scapin, Samuele Natin (Laguna Project)

Photographs:
Federico Riccato, Riccardo Fiorin, Giacomo Cipolato, Luca Scapin (Laguna Project), with contributions to the collection by Marco Basso, Marco Fantin, Marco Picone, Diego Riccato, Jacopo Richard, Giada Riva, Marco Uliana, Paolo Paolucci © Museo di Storia Naturale Giancarlo Ligabue – Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

Illustrations:
Myriam El Assil

Text and illustration review and scientific advice:
Simona Armeli Minicante, Elisa Camatti, Irene Guarneri, Nicoletta Nesto, Marco Sigovini (CNR-ISMAR), Diego Fontaneto (CNR-IRSA).

Species fact sheets’ text translated by:
TRADUZIONI-IN Agency – Lipsie Group