IFF2007 in the BACINO DEL FIUME BRENTA

The prediction of river areas in the General Plan for Public Water Use of the Autonomous Province of Trento — PGUAP — has certainly been an enlightened and forward-looking decision, where river ecosystems are considered for their ecological function. A sound classification of ecological river areas is based on an in-depth assessment of the main morphological, structural and biotic parameters of the ecosystem under consideration, interpreted in the light of the principles of river ecology and the FIF is a method for assessing the ecological functionality of the river ecosystem. In order to obtain an up-to-date and homogeneous FIF database for the whole provincial grid, the project “Application of the FIF to the hydrographic grid of the provincial territory” was launched in 2009. The Working Group of the Environmental Protection Agency applied the FIF to all the typical watercourses of the province for a total of 1 509 km, walking along the waterways from the confluence with the main end receiver at the altitude of 1 800 m, the final limit of application of the Index for the low presence of trees — shrubs. The organisation, arrangement and storage of data in a database called the Trentino IFF database, has also improved its use for the consultation and visualisation of the results on a map, as well as for their dissemination on the network.