Interaction between Catchment Basin Management and Coastal Evolution (Southern Italy)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The research highlights the consequence of an imbalance between “basin management scale” and “coastal management areas” and investigates the relationship between coastline erosion and natural evolution of the inland system at the short-medium timescale while taking account of local climatic changes and sea level rise. The study was undertaken in the Bradano and Basento catchment basins, on the Ionian coast of Basilicata Region (Southern Italy) through an institutional agreement between ENEA (the National Agency for New Technologies) and the Italian Ministry of Environment. In this area previous studies highlighted an important erosional coastline trend that began about 1950. No previous study has considered the role of the coastal river catchment area in this erosion. With this aim, contemporary data for coastal and inland evolution were gathered and compared, implementing existing knowledge with land use analysis in the Bradano and Basento basins using multitemporal Landsat TM Images. For the co...