Numerical modeling of the groundwater flow in the fractured and karst aquifer of the Salento peninsula (Southern Italy)

Abstract

Water resources represented by coastal aquifers are very important for regions characterized by a relevant request of freshwater, but limited rainfall, lack of surface water bodies and intrusion of the seawater through the sediments which host groundwater. Therefore some coastal areas, like the Salento peninsula (southern Italy), are subjected to the risk of desertification and a proper management of groundwater resources requires tools to analyze and predict the water balance and the evolution of the physical system in response to human activities (e.g., ground water withdrawals) and climatic factors. The Salento peninsula is a typical Mediterranean basin, where the main water resource is the aquifer hosted in Cretaceous carbonatic rocks (Calcare di Altamura, Altamura limestone): this is a fractured and karst aquifer, with a poor recharge and complex relationships with the sea. In order to develop a tool to assess the water balance at regional scale for the considered aquifer system, a groundwater flow model was developed by Giudici et al. (2012a); it is based on a conceptual model obtained from a reconstruction of the hydrostratigraphic architecture of the region, which includes the main aquifer and the overlaying rocks characterized by low permeability which can host local and relatively thin aquifers. In this paper that work is updated, by improving the reconstruction of the hydraulic head and of the conceptual model, above all in those areas that the previous model evidenced as critical for the absence of fresh water along the whole aquifer thickness. Moreover, since the estimate of some model’s input parameters is affected by high uncertainty, a sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the effects of this uncertainty on the model’s results.

AFM and pulsed laser ablation methods for Cultural Heritage: application to archeometric analysis of stone artifacts

“…In particular, both the bands at 560 and 610 nm are typical for quartz and are intrinsic of the bulk structure [20]. The comparison between the chemical and mineralogical composition of our findings and a series of previous geological studies on the pits of Calabria [21][22][23][24] allows to conclude that the materials used in the Church construction were taken from a quarry found along the Tyrrhenian coast of Northern Calabria, rich in this natural stone [21] and located close to the Church.…”

A Modelling Approach for Assessing the Hydrogeological Equilibrium of the Karst, Coastal Aquifer of the Salento Peninsula (Southeastern Italy): Evaluating the Effects of a MAR Facility for Wastewater Reuse

“…On the other hand, salinity would increase up to more than 5000 mg/l in 2060, especially along the western Ionian coast. Generally speaking, a full comparison between results obtained by Giudici et al [28] and De Filippis et al [32] and those obtained by Romanazzi et al [36] cannot be performed. As an example, the piezometric trend simulated by Romanazzi et al [36] is smoother, with a watershed which can be clearly identified in the center of the peninsula.…”

“…Anthropogenic stresses are further exacerbated by tourism activities during the summer season. In this framework, an alarming imbalance between freshwater demand and groundwater availability and a high vulnerability to saltwater intrusion have been detected in the last decades either by monitoring [29,30] and modelling [28,[31][32][33][34][35][36]. This represents a major concern in this coastal ecosystem, as salinization may cause negative impacts on irrigated crops, soil fertility [37], and the socioeconomic development of the region.…”

“…In that paper, the areas potentially affected by saltwater intrusion were inferred adopting a sharp-interface approach. The conceptual model reported in Giudici et al [28] was then enhanced by De Filippis et al [32], focusing on an in-depth investigation of the hydrostratigraphic setup in areas where the deep aquifer was found to be saturated with saltwater. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis was performed to identify the most sensitive parameters in the numerical model.…”

Ten years water and energy surface balance from the CNR-ISAC micrometeorological station in Salento peninsula (southern Italy)

“…Monitoring and modelling studies of the aquifer balance in the last decades (Margiotta and Negri, 2005;Portoghese et al, 2005;Romanazzi and Polemio, 2013) showed a decreasing aquifer pressure with increasing salty seawater intrusion. Thus, efforts have been recently made to specifically modelling the groundwater flow in the fractured karst aquifer (Giudici et al, 2012;De Filippis et al, 2013). The aim of this work is to present a data set of long term experimental measurements of the surface energy and water balance as measured by the CNR-ISAC micrometeorological station in Salento peninsula (the only available long term data set in Salento, to the authors' knowledge), and to give an experimental support to the hydrological modelling for the local water resources management.…”