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SUBGEO aims to fully develop an integrated multiscale and multiresolution geophysical investigation approach for the coastal underground freshwater reservoir non-invasive characterization and to gain useful tools for the optimal and sustainable management of the coastal areas and resources. In the present and future times, the climate changes may impose drastic modifications in water resources management strategies. The continuously increasing exploitation of surface water and groundwater resources coupled with reduction trends of actual rainfall and recharge, are constantly leading to a depletion of the total available resources of high quality. It is hence strongly necessary to protect used water resources and to find alternative or further fresh water sources. In this context, coastal areas, intended as the transition zones between land and marine environments, deserve special attention. Here it takes place the inward flux (from sea to land) of saline water but also the outward groundwater flux into the sea. The inward flux, also known as saline intrusion, is relevant due to its influence on land usability, depletion of the total available freshwater resource and or to a lowering of its usability in the coastal areas. The outward flux, less known that the former one, occurs only in particular hydrogeological conditions and is seldom indicated as submarine groundwater discharge (SGD). The presence of these two fluxes causes coastal areas to play a double role: as site of the inward fluxes, the role fragile zones to be protected; as site of outward fluxes, the role of not negligible resource for water supply. Nowadays, the outward fluxes are generally considered lost or not exploitable resources because of their difficult characterizations .
SUBGEO aims to fill this informational gap, operating on the largest Italian coastal aquifer, the Apulia region where the coastal aquifers fed the highest concentration of submarine springs and SGD. The project will develop an innovative geophysical approach based on the integrated use of aerial, land, land-marine and marine geophysical electric and electromagnetic techniques
in order to provide spatially continuous and high-resolution information on the subsoil structure from the offshore areas, where the outward fluxes mix with the sea water, to the onshore ones. SUBGEO will be tuned by small scale laboratory experiments and by numerical simulations to define the best acquisition procedures and check the sensitivity of the strategy for different subsurface conditions. Finally, the proposed approach will be tested in two significant areas to create refined hydro-geophysical models useful for an aware use of the inland subterranean water resources (hence limiting the development of the inward fluxes) and for the
possible exploitation of the outward fluxes.