NATURE-BASED INTERVENTIONS IN VENICE TO RESTORE COASTAL WETLANDS

The city of Venice as well as other inhabited islands are located at the centre of the largest lagoon of the Mediterranean region and one of its few tidal systems (CNV, 2016). Since the 16th and 17th Centuries the largest rivers were deviated from the lagoon to flow directly to the Adriatic Sea to reverse the trend of the lagoon silting up, turning it into a net sediment-deficit ecosystem (CNV, 2016). Furthermore, current economic activities mainly linked to maintaining port access for larger ships and protecting the city from the increasing frequency of flooding (the MOSE mobile barriers) challenge the physical and ecological stability of the lagoon system. In 2023 We are here Venice (WahV) and DEME, through its Italian Branch SIDRA, started a collaboration to develop techniques for the optimization and acceleration of the infill re-naturalisation and greater resilience of the Venice lagoon ecosystem. This collaboration is also assessing new approaches to determining the added natural, social and economic value generated by ecosystem restoration in practice, with specific attention to Venice’s wetlands as a representative example of Mediterranean wetland ecosystems. One site in particular has already yielded interesting results that will be described here.