Driving the modeling of saltwater intrusion at the Venice coastland (Italy) by
ground-based, water-, and air-borne geophysical investigations
P. Teatini
Dept. Mathematical Methods and Models for Scientific
Applications, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
L. Tosi
Institute of Marine Sciences, CNR, Venezia,
Italy
A. Viezzoli
Aarhus Geophysics APS, Aarhus, Denmark
R. de Franco, G. Biella
Institute of Environmental Process Dynamics, CNR, Milano,
Italy
C. Tang
Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research for Sustainable Development, CAS,
China
ABSTRACT
The coastland surrounding the southern Venice Lagoon, Italy, is a
precarious environment subject to both natural changes and anthropogenic
pressure. One major environmental problem is the saltwater contamination
in shallow aquifers. Since the early 2000s, a significant effort has been
devoted to understand the process dynamics by integrating different
geophysical techniques, i.e. TL-ERT (Time Lapse - Earth Resistivity
Tomography), MRT (Marine RT), AEM (Airborne ElectroMagnetic), and shallow
water VHRS (Very High Resolution Seismic) surveys. The monitoring results
have been used to drive the development of a reliable numerical model for
the simulation of the saltwater intrusion along the margin of the southern
Venice Lagoon. The model solves the coupled density dependent flow and
transport equations by a highly accurate numerical approach based on the
mixed hybrid finite element (MHFE) method and a combination of MHFE with
high resolution finite volumes (HRFV) for the discretization of the flow
and transport equations, respectively. Modeling application provides a
clear picture of the relative importance of the factors that contribute to
the soil contamination in the study area.
