Land subsidence in the Venetian area: known and recent aspects
L. Carbognin, L. Tosi
Institute of Marine Sciences, National Research Council, Venezia, Italy
P. Teatini
Dept. Mathematical Methods and Models for Scientific
Applications, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
ABSTRACT
The paper reviews three major factors responsible for the relative land settlement
occurred in the Venice lagoon area over the XX century. The anthropogenic geomechanical
subsidence, induced by groundwater over-exploitation, the geological subsidence, and the
eustatic sea level rise have lowered Venice of about 23 cm with respect to the m.s.l..
Other causes deeply studied over the last years are: a) land sinking due to the expected
gas production from the Chioggia-Mare reservoir, but the development project is to date
shelved despite the reassuring results obtained by a modeling analysis, and
b) geochemical subsidence due to peat oxidation and salinisation of clayey sediments
taking place in the southern catchment of the Venice lagoon. Finally, an integrated
subsidence monitoring system, based on leveling, GPS, and InSAR techniques,
has been elaborated and used to provide a comprehensive image of the land displacements
in the Venice region over the past decade.
