Assessment of seawater intrusion and groundwater quality in the anthropized reclamation area of Arborea (w Sardinia)

Coastal aquifers, Arborea Pain, Sardinia, nitrate GALDIT Vulnerability index

Assessment of vulnerability to pollution and seawater intrusion of groundwater in the anthropized reclamation area of Arborea (W. Sardinia)

The phenomenon of seawater intrusion is one of the major problems in Sardinian coastal aquifers (Italy). In particular, it has been detected in the reclamation area of Arborea plain (west Sardinia) where intensive agriculture and dairy farming are the mainstays of the local economy. In this research SINTACS and GALDIT vulnerability indexes and the numerical model for simulating groundwater flow have been applied for evaluating respectively the intrinsic vulnerability to pollution, seawater intrusion and groundwater flow for a typical Mediterranean phreatic sandy aquifer such as Arborea plain aquifer. This research may offer a valuable contribution to the team of existing tools in the field of seawater intrusion and groundwater quality modelling

Prediction of nitrate concentration in groundwater using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) for the estimation of the nitrate concentration in a study area located in the Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) of the Arborea plain (Sardinia - Italy). Agricultural derived nitrate contamination of groundwater has been estimated by using easily and economical quantifiable parameters such as pH, electrical conductivity, temperature, groundwater level. Data used for training and validating the ANNs derive from a set of 225 measurements coming from 12 piezometers distributed in the study area. In order to define the best topology of the ANN and the best dimension of respectively the training and the validation sets a growing procedure has been applied