Workshop Program – AI4Nature@AVSS 2026

Date: August 31, 2026
Location: Lecce, Italy (Hybrid mode)

Full Schedule

Time	Session / Event	Details
09:00 – 09:10	Opening Remarks	Workshop organizers
09:10 – 09:45	Invited Talk	Lisandro Benedetti Cecchi (University of Pisa, Italy) “Grand challenges of marine biodiversity monitoring”
09:45 – 10:45	ORAL SESSION 1A	TERRESTRIAL & FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS [~15 min per paper (13 min talk + 2 min Q&A)] Chair: Ilyes Benaissa, CNR, Italy
	ID 5	Spatio-Temporal Characterization of Nutrient Loading in Mar Menor Using Multi-Source Monitoring and Forecasting Aurora González-Vidal, Antonio Martínez-Ibarra, Adrián Cánovas-Rodríguez, Yu Ye, Antonio Skarmeta (University of Murcia)
	ID 6	Context Matters: Re-Identification of Lynx in Camera Trap Images Sead Mustafic (Joanneum Research); Dominik Dachs (Meles Wildbiologie); Rainer Prüller (Pentamap GmbH); Florian Schöggl (Pentamap GmbH); Roland Perko (Joanneum Research)
	ID 7	From Pixels to Patrols: A Calibration-Aware Sensor Fusion Pipeline for Camera-Trap-Driven Anti-Poaching Resource Allocation Ka Hin Chan, Long Nam Ao, Weng Kin Loi, Long Tin Tse, Sok Kin Cheng (Colégio Diocesano de São José (5ª))
	ID 8	Explainable Computer Vision for Tracking Intraspecific Morphological Variation Across Ontogenetic and Geographic Scales: A Case Study on Bosmina longirostris Microscopic Images Valeriia Kirova (National Research Nuclear University MEPhI)
10:45 – 11:15	☕ Coffee Break	"Chiostro del 500"
11:15 – 12:25	ORAL SESSION 1A	FORESTRY, WILDFIRE & HAZARD MONITORING [~15 min per paper (13 min talk + 2 min Q&A)] Chair: Concetto Spampinato (University of Catania, Italy)
	ID 9	Impact of Manual Annotation Refinement on Instance Segmentation Accuracy in UAV-LiDAR-Based Forest Inventories Adrian Canovas-Rodriguez, Guillermo Carmona-Martinez, Aurora Gonzalez-Vidal, Antonio Skarmeta (University of Murcia)
	ID 12	Towards Explainable and Robust Wildfire Anomaly Detection Alessandro Del Prete, Zahida Mashaallah (University of Naples Federico II)
	ID 13	Needles in a Raystack: Ultra-Sparse LiDAR Occupancy Detection for Bat Tracks Nico Klar (Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW))*; Pankaj Rana (Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW)); Nizam Gifary (Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW)); Jakob Traub (Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW)); Aamir Ahmad (University of Stuttgart, Institute of Flight Mechanics and Control (iFR), Flight Robotics and Perception Group (FRPG))
	ID 25	HMDAB-Net: A Dual-Stream Late-Fusion Framework for Flood and Structural Damage Segmentation in Hydro-Meteorological Disaster Imagery Iyed Dhahri, Mahmoud Golabi, Karim Hammoudi, Lhassane Idoumghar (IRIMAS, UHA)
12:25 – 13:00	Invited Talk	Silvia Zuffi (CNR, Italy) “From Shape to Sound: 3D Dolphin Reconstruction and Fish Source Separation for Non-Invasive Monitoring”
13:00 – 14:00	🍽️ Lunch Break	"Chiostro del 500"
14:00 – 16:00	ORAL SESSION 2	MARINE & UNDERWATER VISION, NAVIGATION, SAR & ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION SUPPORT [~15 min per paper (13 min talk + 2 min Q&A)] Chair: Silvia Zuffi, CNR, Italy
	ID 10	Real-Time Horizon Line Detection Using Transformer-Based Semantic Segmentation Thiago Aragão (Fluminense Federal University)*; Esteban Clua (Fluminense Federal University); Leandro Santiago (Fluminense Federal University); Pedro Lopes (Fluminense Federal University); João Chagas (Fluminense Federal University); Luiz Gonçalves (Rio Grande do Norte Federal University)
	ID 11	Sparse Autoencoder Representations for Minority Class Recovery in Imbalanced SAR Vessel Classification Ch Muhammad Awais (University of Pisa)*; Marco Reggiannini (ISTI-CNR); Davide Moroni (ISTI-CNR)
	ID 16	Using Retrieval-Augmented Generation Agents to Aid Decision-making Process in Environmental Licensing and Other Environmental Related Studies Thiago Nascimento, Mariana Costa, Luiz Goncalves (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte)*
	ID 19	Autonomous Underwater Monitoring for Marine Life Preservation and Fish Population Analysis Vincenzo Carletti (University of Salerno); Antonio Greco (University of Salerno); Andrea Vincenzo Ricciardi (University of Salerno); Alessia Saggese (University of Salerno)*; Carlo Sansone (University of Naples Federico II); Bruno Vento (CINI)
	ID 20	GeoCAM: Self-Supervised Sonar–Optical Representation Learning via Geographic Overlap Supervision Fadi Zidi*; Giuseppe Celeste; Andrea De Salve; Abdellah Zakaria Sellam; Paolo Spagnolo; Cosimo Distante (CNR-ISASI, Italy)
	ID 21	A Foundation-Model Pipeline For Few-Shot Fish Catch Species Identification Alessandro Inguglia (Independent Researcher)*; Marco Milazzo (Department of Earth and Marine Science (DiSTeM), University of Palermo)
	ID 24	Assessing the Impact of Dataset Shift for Automatic Nephrops norvegicus Burrows Detection and Classification Through Deep Learning Oscar Papini (National Research Council of Italy)*; Marco Reggiannini (Institute of Information Science and Technologies, National Research Council of Italy); Enrico Cecapolli (Institute for Marine Biological Resources and Biotechnology, National Research Council of Italy); Filippo Domenichetti (Institute for Marine Biological Resources and Biotechnology, National Research Council of Italy); Lorenzo Zacchetti (Institute for Marine Biological Resources and Biotechnology, National Research Council of Italy); Michela Martinelli (Institute for Marine Biological Resources and Biotechnology, National Research Council of Italy); Gabriele Pieri (Institute of Information Science and Technologies, National Research Council of Italy)
16:00 – 16:30	☕ Coffee Break	"Chiostro del 500"
16:30 – 17:05	Invited Talk	Kakani Katija (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, USA) “FathomVerse: Accelerating understanding of underwater visual data through community science”
17:05 – 18:20	Panel Discussion	From Pixels to Policy: How Can Artificial Intelligence Drive the Next Decade of Environmental Action? Panelists: invited speakers + representative from MPA
18:20 – 18:30	Closing Remarks	Summary and future roadmap

Keynote & Invited Speakers

• Lisandro Benedetti Cecchi – Professor, University of Pisa, Italy
  Marine ecology, biodiversity monitoring

• Silvia Zuffi – Senior Researcher, CNR-IMATI, Italy
  Computer Vision

• Kakani Katija – Senior Principal Engineer, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, USA
  Biological fluid dynamics, in situ instrumentation, bio-inspired design, ecology of marine invertebrates, ocean imaging

Panelists (TBC)

• Academic and industry speakers from the day
• Representative from a major conservation NGO (e.g., WWF) or European Environmental Agency

Hybrid Access

Remote participants can join via the AI4NATURE virtual platform. Links will be shared with registered attendees.