Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) has emerged in recent years as a climate change adaptation measure to increase water availability in dry seasons and, in coastal aquifers, also to contrast the seawater intrusion.
The SeTe (Sécheresse et Territoires) project, funded by the EU programme Interreg ALCOTRA, involves the feasibility study and demonstration of MAR in the Cuneo plain, a large shallow alluvial aquifer at the south-western edge of the Po Plain. In this area, the availability of water for irrigation during summer has diminished in recent years, sparking the initiative for testing MAR as an environmentally and economically sustainable countermeasure.
The three project pilot sites identified in the project - Beinette, Tetti Pesio-Morozzo and Tarantasca-Centallo - are characterized by the presence of “fontanili”, i.e. drainage trenches dug since the Middle Ages to reclaim marshy land by lowering the groundwater level. Flow rates up to 1400 l/s are extracted by fontanili, which therefore represent an important irrigation water source but are very sensitive to groundwater level declines.
The activities and the results of the first half of the SeTe-ALCOTRA project, which started in October 2023 and lasts 3 years, are hereby summarized.
Historical meteorological, geological, and hydrogeological data were collected to reconstruct the climate impacts on water resources and to characterize the shallow aquifer.
Three monitoring networks were implemented in the test sites to measure groundwater levels and flow rates in the fontanili. Field tests were performed to characterize the aquifer in the experimental recharge sites, such as Lefranc tests, pumping tests, and grain size distribution analyses on samples from core drillings and shallow excavations.
Three infiltration structures have been designed, with two configurations (two sites with a shallow trench and one with a vadose zone well), and their installation and first weeks of operation will be presented.