Exploring the Relationship between River Discharge and Coastal Erosion: An Integrated Approach Applied to the Pisa Coastal Plain (Italy)

Coastal erosion coupled with human-induced pressure has severely affected the coastal areas of the Mediterranean region in the past and continues to do so with increasing intensity today. In this context, the Pisa coastal plain shows a long history of erosion, which started at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In this work, shoreline positions derived from historical maps as well as airborne and DGPS (Differential Global Positioning System) surveys were analyzed in a GIS (Geographic Information System) environment to identify the main changes that have occurred in the last 142 years. These analyses were compared with 100 years of discharge data measured at the S. Giovanni alla Vena gauge to identify a possible correlation between the two sets of information. Finally, Sentinel-2 and Landsat images were studied to identify the dispersion of sediments transported by the Arno River. In particular, we found a minimum of fluvial discharge in the years 1954, 1978, and 2012 corresponding to a peak of erosion, while the reduced erosion rate and the fluvial discharge increased in the years 1928–1944, 1954–1975, and after 2012. The qualitative anticorrelation between discharge and erosion is particularly true if we take into account flood events with a value of discharge greater than 700 m3/s, which are those able to transport suspended sand. The remote sensing analyses of Sentinel-2 images acquired during the floods of 6 February 2019 and 3 December 2019, under the most typical wind and sea state conditions for this area (wind coming from SW and storms coming from W/SW and SW) show that during these events a consistent amount of sediment was transported by the river. However, the majority of these sediments are not deposited along the coastline but are dispersed offshore. Grain-size analyses on the transported sediment show that plumes are formed by coarse-to-medium sand, suitable for coastal nourishment, but the reconstructed sediment dispersion lines show that some sectors of the coastline are constantly in the shade. These areas are the most affected by erosion

Geoarchaeology as a tool for reconstructing the evolution of the Apuo-Versilian Plain (NW Italy)

A geoarchaeological approach integrating geomorphological, stratigraphical and archaeologic data was adopted to reconstruct the palaeogeographic evolution of an area of the Apuo-Versilian plain since the Etruscan age. We produced a geomorphological map, analyzed stratigraphy data from sections/boreholes in the plain, and compiled a dataset of archaeological findings with a particular focus on the Acquarella site which is an outstanding settlement in the area. The plotting of the archaeological findings on the geomorphological map allowed to better constraint the landforms surveyed by field work and remote sensing analyses. The analyzed stratigraphic data suggests a discontinuous trend of coastal progradation. Oscillations in this trend are testified by four small scale transgressive - regressive parasequences that occurred after 4600 yrs cal B.C.. In agreement with the archaeological findings on the surface, the base of the uppermost sequence was dated to ca 500 cal AD, implying that since the Early Middles Ages the progradation trend has been continuous. Furthermore, a pronounced increase in progradation was observed after the 16th century, probably linked to both climatic influence (Little Ice Age) and human impacts (deforestation). The Acquarella rustic building has developed in this coastal-piedmont context since the Etruscan age. The reason for its longevity (eh century B.C. - Early Middle Ages) was related to a suite of environmental aspects such as the protection offered by the surrounding hills, water availability, and the elevation above a coastal plain experiencing periodic flooding Moreover, a crucial element was identified in the position of the site in respect to the main ancient roads connecting Pisa to Luni (Via Aurelia/Aemilia) and the coastal area with the inland. The correlation of the geomorphology with the archeological data from Acquarella, along with the other findings along the coastal-piedmont area allowed to depict the landscape scenarios relative to the Etruscan, Roman, Early Middle ages and Modern ages

The lagoonal harbour of Portus Pisanus (N Tyrrhen- ian Sea, Italy): a long history of human adaptation to changing coastline

During the last millennia human and natural processes have become increasingly intertwined, especially in the Mediterranean coastal and alluvial plains where major urban and trade centres developed since protohistoric times. The construction of ports represents one of the human activities that have mostly contributed to modify coastal environments, inducing a variety of hydrodynamic and hydrochemical changes especially since Roman times (Marriner et al., 2014). Exceptions in this common manner to plan harbours have been recognised along the N Tyrrhenian coast, where no high-impact defense works are explicitly documented by either historical sources or archaeological excavations for three main harbours developed during Etruscan-Roman times (IV-I century BC): Portus Lunae (Bini et al., 2012), Portus Pisanus and Vada Volterrana. Roman literary sources (i.e., Itinerarium Maritimum 501; Rutilio Namaziano) mentioned Portus Pisanus as a flourishing commercial site within a natural protected area (called Sinus Pisanus by Tacito) characterized by Posidonia meadows and located at the foot of Leghorn hills, ca. 18.5 km south of the Pisa city. Accordingly, recent excavations undertaken close to the hills slope, 3 km inland from modern coastline, unearthed a wooden palisade, stone piers and a warehouse dated to the Roman period (Pasquinucci, 2013; Morhange et al., 2015). However, the precise location of the lagoonal harbour basin is still controversial. This study aims to contribute to fill this knowledge gap and shed new light on the main stages of harbour history in the framework of the mid-late Holocene palaeogeographic evolution of the Pisa Plain. The application of a multidisciplinary approach (sedimentological and micropalaeontological core analyses, radiocarbon dating, geomorphological field survey, remote sensing and historical cartography) has revealed that a wide lagoonal basin formed in the study area during the marine transgression peak (ca. 8000 cal yr BP). This basin, recorded by a m-thick subsurface succession of soft grey clays with brackish meiofauna, persisted for several millennia and corresponds to Sinus Pisanus. The available stratigraphic data document that during Roman times the lagoon became progressively less connected to the sea and turned into a coastal lake/pond. Filling processes started two-three millennia later respect to the lagoon occupying the Pisa city area during the Holocene (Rossi et al., 2011). This seaward facies shift forced the westward transferring of the Middle Ages harbour. These results show that natural sheltered conditions along with the distance from coeval Arno River made more advantageous for humans following the shoreline changes, rather than making high-impact interventions. 2012, Bini M., Bruckner H., Chelli A., Da Prato S., Gervasini L., Palaeogeographies of the Magra Valley coastal plain to costrain the location of the Roman harbour of Luna (NW Italy), Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 337-338, 37–51. 2014, Marriner N., Morhange C., Kaniewski D., Carayon N., Ancient harbour infrastructure in the Levant: tracking the birth and rise of new forms of anthropogenic pressure, Nature Scientific Reports, 4, 5554. 2015, Morhange C., Marriner N., Baralis A., Blot M.L., Bony G., Carayon N., Carmona P., Flaux C., Giaime M., Goiran J.-P., Kouka M., Lena A., Oueslati A., Pasquinucci M., Porotov A., Dynamiques géomorphologiques et typologie géoarcheologique des ports antiques en contextes lagunaires, Quaternaire, 26, (2), 117–139. 2013, Pasquinucci M., Guida all’archeologia delle coste livornesi. Nardini Editore. Provincia di Livorno. 271 pp. 2011, Rossi V., Amorosi A., Sarti G., Potenza M., Influence of inherited topography on the Holocene sedimentary evolution of coastal systems: An example from Arno coastal plain (Tuscany, Italy), Geomorphology, 135 (1-2), 117–128

Middle to late Holocene environmental evolution of the Pisa coastal plain (Tuscany, Italy) and early human settlements

A cross-disciplinary (sedimentological, geochemical, micropalaeontological and archaeological) examination of 12 continuous cores, up to 20m long, integrated with stratigraphical, geomorphological and historical investigations, allows for reliable delineation of the middle-late Holocene environmental evolution in the Pisa old town area, with special emphasis on the Etruscan age transition. Depositional facies were identified through integration of sedimentological and micropalaeontological (benthic foraminifers, ostracods, phytoclasts and palynomorphs) data, while sediment dispersal patterns were reconstructed on the basis of geochemical analyses. Facies architecture was chronologically constrained by combined archaeological and radiocarbon dating. The turnaround from early Holocene, transgressive conditions to the ensuing (middle-late Holocene) phase of sea-level highstand is witnessed by a prominent shallowing-upward succession of lagoonal, paludal and then poorly drained floodplain deposits supplied by two river systems (Arno and Serchio). This 'regressive' trend, reflecting coastal progradation under nearly stable sea-level conditions, was interrupted by widespread swamp development close to the Iron-Etruscan age transition. The expansion of vast, low-lying paludal areas across the alluvial plain was mostly induced by the intricate, short-term evolution of the meandering Arno and Serchio river systems. These changes in the fluvial network, which occurred during a period of variable climate conditions, strongly influenced the early Etruscan culture (7th-5th century BC) in terms of human settlement and society behaviour. Conversely, a strong impact of human frequentation on depositional environments is observed at the transition to the Roman age (from the 1st century BC onwards), when the wetlands were drained and the modern alluvial plain started to form. The palaeoenvironmental reconstruction fits in with the original geographical descriptions mentioned in Strabo's Chronicles, and provides chronologically constrained data of fluvial evolution from the Pisa old town area. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA

Proteomics coupled with AhR-reporter gene bioassay for human and environmental safety assessment of sewage sludge and hydrochar

Today application of sewage sludge (SL) and hydrochar (HC) in agriculture is a common practice for soil conditioning and crop fertilization, however safety concerns for human and environmental health due to the presence of toxic compounds have recently been expressed. Our aim was to test the suitability of proteomics coupled with bioanalytical tools for unravelling mixture effects of these applications in human and environmental safety assessment. We conducted proteomic and bioinformatic analysis of cell cultures used in the DR-CALUX® bioassay to identify proteins differentially abundant after exposure to SL and the corresponding HC, rather than only using the Bioanalytical Toxicity Equivalents (BEQs) obtained by DR-CALUX®. DR-CALUX® cells exposed to SL or HC showed a differential pattern of protein abundance depending on the type of SL and HC extract. The modified proteins are involved in antioxidant pathways, unfolded protein response and DNA damage that have close correlations with the effects of dioxin on biological systems and with onset of cancer and neurological disorders. Other cell response evidence suggested enrichment of heavy metals in the extracts. The present combined approach represents an advance in the application of bioanalytical tools for safety assessment of complex mixtures such as SL and HC. It proved successful in screening proteins, the abundance of which is determined by SL and HC and by the biological activity of legacy toxic compounds, including organohalogens

Sand supply from shoreface to foredunes: aeolian transport measurements and morphological evolution of a Tuscany beach stretch (Italy)

The coastal dunes are a highly dynamic sedimentary environment characterized by a continuous time-space readjustment in terms of morphology, shape and dimension. This is mainly due to the periodic fluctuation of the volume of sand available and by the force of the deflation processes, which are in turn driven by the interplay among pattern of vegetation cover, surface roughness and local-regional wind regime. The aim of our research is to quantify the deflation, transport and deposition of sands in a natural coastal field dune system located in the northern coast of Tuscany, Italy. The northern part of the investigated area is characterized by stable coastline condition while southwards strong erosive processes took place since 1800 year. Sedimentological data come from a series of sand collectors spaced along transects orthogonal to the coastline from the backshore to the semi stable dune field. The collectors were constructed of PVC pipe 100 x height 10 cm, with two openings 7 cm wide and 50 cm tall arranged on opposite sides of the tube. Opening willing to windward served for sand collection, and to leeward, covered with a metal wire 60μm opening. Collectors were buried along, until the base of the free window coincide with the surface of the ground about 1,5 m. The sand trapped within each collector was sampled every two hours for three consecutive times. In laboratory sand samples were weighed and subject to grain size analysis by means of mechanical sieves. The local winds parameters and their fluctuation with the time were acquired through a Meteorological mobile station. The station is equipped with three ammeters located to three different heights from ground surface: 40, 120 and 180 cm. A wireless sensor allows the constant output of data (each 5 sec) to a device. Temperature, and relative humidity value are furnished every 30 minutes. Analysis of data has evidenced the time-space fluctuation of sand volume in the two study area (stable area and under erosion). Basing on this methodological approach the time-space fluctuation of sand volume experienced by the two study areas (stable area and under erosion) has been estimated

Geoarchaeological practice applied to archaeological predictive modelling: methodologies and results from Mappa Project

Late Holocene deposits stored beneath the modern deltaic-alluvial plains are excellent sedimentary archives to explore in detail the succession of landscapes developed, since the Proto-historic period (ca. 3000 yr BC), under the mutual in-teraction of natural and anthropogenic forcing factors. The recent coring campaign performed in the Pisa plain, in the context of “MAPPA project”, has represented a great oppor-tunity to highlight the history of human-environment rela-tionships in a long-settled city area

Geomorphologic Map of Northeastern Sector of San Jorge Gulf (Chubut, Argentina)

This paper presents a 1:100,000 scale geomorphologic map of the Northeastern sector of San Jorge Gulf (Chubut Province) in Patagonia, Argentina, covering more than 1,000 km 2. Derived from remote sensing data and validated by three field surveys, it has been compiled in order to understand the past and recent evolution of the area with particular reference to sea-level oscillation studies, for which this map is the basic tool. The very low human impact and rates of dynamic landscape change allow the preservation of extensive palaeo deposits and landforms, including those indicative of sea-level variations. The relative change of sea level dominates landscape evolution, allowing the formation of widespread marine and lagoon deposits often interfingering with fluvial deposits and reworked by aeolian process in the framework of consequent beach progradation.Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse

MAPPA cores: an interdisciplinary approach

In the urban and periurban area of Pisa, 18 cores ranging in depth between 7 and 15 m were performed and analysed through an interdisciplinary approach, which led to an improved stratigraphic log representation. The acquired data also improved our knowledge about the palaeoenvironmental and human settlement evolution of Pisa area over the past 6000 years, evidencing the mutual interaction existing between landscape and human activities