Vulnerabilities  

Freshwater inland resources can be contaminated due to the intrusion of saline water, both underground and on surface, increasing drought problems (e.g. experienced in 2003 in the southern region of the Venice lagoon), both for human use and agriculture production (1) .

Along the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, storm surge and saltwater intrusion into aquifers threaten parts of the Croatian, Albanian, and Turkish coasts (2). Problems of saline intrusion would be further exacerbated by reductions in runoff and by increased withdrawals in response to higher demand. Excessive demand already contributes to saline intrusion problems in many coastal areas of Italy, Spain, Greece and North Africa (3).

Salt water intrusion due to sea-level rise is mostly a very slow process that may take several centuries to reach equilibrium (4). Even small rates of groundwater pumping from coastal aquifers are expected to lead to stronger salinization of the groundwater than sea-level rise during the 21st century (5).

References

The references below are cited in full in a separate map 'References'. Please click here if you are looking for the full references for Italy.

1. Eisenreich (2005)
2. http://www.worldbank.org
3. Aru (1996), in: Karas (2000)
4. Webb and Howard (2011), in: IPCC (2014)
5. Ferguson and Gleeson (2012); Loaiciga et al. (2012), both in: IPCC (2014)