SECURE

Saltwater intrusion and climate change: monitoring, countermeasures and informed governance

Interreg Italy-Croatia - Program 2014-2020

The standard Projects MoST, Asteris, and Change We Care developed within the Interreg V-A IT-HR (MAC IT-HR in the following) allowed significant advances both in the characterization of the process of saltwater intrusion under the effects of climate change in the Adriatic low-lying coastal areas of Italy and Croatia and in proposing best practices for facing this scourge. The monitoring networks established by these three Projects helped to design and realize countermeasures aimed at mitigating the salinization of farmland soils and water bodies, thus enhancing agricultural productivity. In addition, from the gained experiences, specific guidelines were developed by each of the three projects at the local scale considered in each pilot site.

SeCure, which is allocated in the Cluster Adaptation to climate changes "governance and capacity building", is aimed to (i) maximize the main outcomes and the experiences developed in MAC IT-HR projects and the synergies between the projects to enhance visibility and transferability, and (ii) fully exploit and consolidate the results achieved so far to further increase the knowledge base on the saltwater contamination of the northern Adriatic coastlands in preparation for the next programming period, in particular Specific objective 2.4. First, SeCure will allow to extend to one more year the monitoring activities of the three joint projects giving the opportunity to use a longer time window for improving the characterization of the saltwater intrusion, which is subject to a wide range of natural forcing conditions and climate change. Second, SeCure will take advantage of one more year of monitoring to assess the effectiveness of the realized countermeasures in terms of water quality and agricultural productivity. Third, comparison and integration of the different experiences coming from MAC IT-HR PPs will allow to upscale the guidelines previously developed at local scale to the more general and wider view point of the entire Adriatic basin focusing on low-lying coastal farmlands.

Project partners:
LP: University of Padova – Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (UNIPD), Italy
PP1: CNR - Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources (CNR IGG), Italy
PP2: Veneto Region - Soil and Cost Defence Directorate (REGVEN), Italy
PP3: University of Split - Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Geodesy, (UNIST-FGAG), Croatia
PP4: Regional Development Agency Dubrovnik-Neretva County (DUNEA), Croatia
PP5: Public Institution for Management of Protected Natural Areas of Dubrovnik-Neretva County (PIDNC), , Croatia
PP6: Croatian Water - Water Management Institute (CW), Croatia

Budget: 600.000,00 Euro

Start date: May 2022

Duration: 14 months

Contact at Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources – CNR: Dr Luigi Tosi (luigi.tosi@igg.cnr.it)

Website: https://www.italy-croatia.eu/web/secure