Saltwater intrusion and climate change: monitoring, countermeasures and informed governance
The standard projects MoST, Asteris, and Change We Care, developed within the framework of the Interreg VA IT-HR program (hereinafter MAC IT-HR), have made significant progress both in characterizing the process of saltwater intrusion under the effects of climate change in the low-lying coastal areas of the Adriatic Sea in Italy and Croatia, and in proposing best practices to address this scourge. The monitoring networks established by these three projects have helped design and implement countermeasures to mitigate the salinization of agricultural soils and water bodies, thus improving agricultural productivity. Furthermore, based on the experience gained, each of the three projects has developed specific guidelines for the local scale considered in each pilot site. SeCure, which is located in the Climate Change Adaptation “Governance and Capacity Building” Cluster, aims to (i) maximize the key results and experiences developed in the MAC IT-HR projects and the synergies between projects to increase visibility and transferability, and (ii) fully leverage and consolidate the results achieved so far to further increase the knowledge base on saltwater contamination of the Northern Adriatic coasts in preparation for the next programming period, in particular Specific Objective 2.4. First, SeCure will allow the monitoring activities of the three joint projects to be extended by another year, providing the opportunity to use a longer timeframe to improve the characterization of saltwater intrusion, which is subject to a wide range of natural forcing conditions and climate change. Second, SeCure will use an additional year of monitoring to evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented countermeasures in terms of water quality and agricultural productivity. Third, the comparison and integration of the different experiences from the IT-HR MAC PPs will allow us to extend the guidelines previously developed at the local scale to a more general and broader perspective of the entire Adriatic basin, with particular attention to low-altitude coastal agricultural areas.
Project partners:
• LP: University of Padua – Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering (UNIPD), Italy
• PP1: National Research Council – Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources (CNR IGG), Italy
• PP2: Veneto Region – Directorate for Land and Coastal Defence (REGVEN), Italy
• PP3: University of Split – Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Geodesy (UNIST-FGAG), Croatia
• PP4: Regional Development Agency Dubrovnik-Neretva County (DUNEA), Croazia
• PP5: Public Institution for Management of Protected Natural Areas of Dubrovnik-Neretva County (PIDNC), Croazia
• PP6: Croatian Water – Water Management Institute (CW), Croazia
Budget: 600.000,00 Euro