Prediction of land subsidence due to groundwater withdrawal along
the Emilia-Romagna coast
M. Gonella
Med Ingegneria S.r.l., Ferrara, Italy
G. Gambolati, G. Giunta, M. Putti, P. Teatini
Dept. Mathematical Methods and Models for Scientific
Applications, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
ABSTRACT
After the Second World War the Romagna coastal stretch between the Po
river delta and Cattolica has experienced a dramatic land settlement
mainly due to the water withdrawal which has characterized the
economic and tourist development of this area since the early 1950s.
A numerical study of land settlement due to water pumping from the
Romagna regional aquifer system is performed by an uncoupled approach
consisting of a three-dimensional hydrologic model based on the
MIKE-SHE code and a
one-dimensional consolidation model. The results of the hydrological
model as been used as boundary conditions for the subsidence model,
which is applied at some locations along the Romagna coastline where
detailed stratigraphies are available. Both models are calibrated
using the piezometric decline and land subsidence measurements from
1950 to present, and then applied to predict land settlement from 1995
to 2015 under two realistic water pumping programs. Numerical results
provide during these 20 years an average yearly subsidence rate equal to
0.8 and 2.5 cm/year with the ''optimistic'' and ''pessimistic'' scenarios, respectively.
An approximate evaluation of land subsidence from 2015 to 2100 is also given.
