Chapters authored
Coastal Water Quality: Hydrometeorological Impact of River Overflow and High-resolution Mapping from Sentinel-2 Satellite
The increase of human settlements and activities in coastal areas is causing a significant impact on coastal water quality. Predicting and monitoring the latter is of fundamental importance for assessing sustainable coastal engineering and ecosystem health. This trend is strongly influenced by the presence of rivers’ mouths, acting as critical links between inland and sea. Forecasting river discharges and overflows, using hydrometeorological modelling, can provide a quantitative estimate of the excessive supply of sea nutrients, favouring algal proliferation and eutrophication phenomena. The river overflow contributes to the increase of the coastal bacterial concentration, contaminating marine bioindicators, such as bivalve molluscs. Coastal water status can be monitored by satellite high-resolution optical spectroradiometers, such as Sentinel-2 constellation, capable to retrieve Chlorophyll-a concentration as well as total suspended sediments, at the resolution of about 10 meters. This remote mapping is complementary to in situ samplings, both essential for supporting decisions on the management of coastal mollusc farming and fishing. In this work, we report the recent advancements in hydrological model-based prediction of river surges and remote sensing techniques exploiting Sentinel-2 imagery as well as their implications on coastal water quality management. As a pilot area, we select the central Adriatic Sea in the Mediterranean basin and the Abruzzo region coastline in Italy.
Part of the book: Engineering Problems