Hydrophilia : the future of the agricultural landscape for the water resources management and the environmental protection of the Comacchio Valli and the Mezzano lands

According to the future scenarios, climate change and the constant ocean level rise will put a strain on agricultural activities and habitats located in coastal areas. To date, these critical issues have been faced only marginally, and with a conservative approach largely due to the presence of restriction paradoxically linked to the biodiversity protection regulations in the Po Delta Park. Precisely for this reason this thesis face the problem by adopting a solution that make these territories increasingly resilient to the sea water intrusion. The study area is represented by the Valli di Comacchio, which returns to being a habitat of land and water as it was originally, converting the territory to conservative agriculture practices which, combined with the inclusion of AFI (Infiltration Forest Areas) and wetland are a useful tool to build a freshwater barrier that safeguards cultivated land from interaction with the brackish interface, and contrasts the eutrophication processes of the Valli di Comacchio. The inclusion of these landscape-environmental devices, while subtracting surface area from agricultural space, can increase its productivity (and resilience) by acting as a water reserve and habitat for animal and plant species essential to the ecological balance of these transition areas between land and sea.