Seawater intrusion and groundwater quality in the Southern Italy region of Apulia: a multi-methodological approach to the protection

Abstract

Remarkably fast socio-economic development over the past few decades stressed the Region of Apulia’s hydrogeology by originating different hazard sources. Massive groundwater withdrawal increased and aquifers were also increasingly bound to be a sort of ultimate receptacle for domestic and industrial wastewaters. The entire region underwent twofold human-origin pollution caused by saline seawater and chemical-physical intrusion. The importance of impaired natural resources and situation severity called for an approach based on all scientific knowledge available, supplemented by up-to-date investigations on groundwater. The main objective was to identify quality trends availability degradation and groundwater resource risks, by using different GS integrated methodologies and developing management tools, the latter to be simple, quick, affordable and as low cost as possible. The proposed approach was based on groundwater vulnerability assessment and use of an automatic hydrogeology monitoring network, the analysis of rainfall, air temperature, river flow yield time series and, more importantly, piezometric level checks to quantify groundwater availability changes, salinity trend analysis to assess changing seawater intrusion effects, groundwater quality schematic mapping with available chemical- physical laboratory data and multi-parameter logging for fast groundwater quality classification. Each tool used is summarised with the main results ofapplications to Apulia’s aquifers.