Assessment of environmental conditions in Civitavecchia (Rome, Italy) harbour

Harbours and maritime transport are essential for both local and national economic development creating wealth, jobs and attracting investment and resources. However, the presence of port infrastructures and associated activities such as vessel docking, handling and transport of goods, production of a great quantity of wastes and pollutants and periodical dredgings, generate significant environmental impacts on coastal ecosystems and seawater quality. Civitavecchia harbour (Rome, Italy) is the first Mediterranean cruise port with approximately 2.6 million passengers, characterized by intense traffic of ships engaged in the carriage of goods and persons and interested by continuous maintenance and expansion works to improve its receptive capacity. In this context a significant support is given from the availability of continuous measurement systems, which offer an important tool for marine monitoring, allowing the acquisition of physical, chemical and biological time series, fundamental prerogative to promptly verify any unexpected phenomena and process. The Laboratory of Experimental Oceanology and Marine Ecology (University of Tuscia) is strongly involved in the environmental monitoring of the Civitavecchia coastal area. In June 2012 a fixed station was installed on a dock of the Civitavecchia harbour performing repeated measurements of surface water temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity and chl-a fluorescence. Moreover, a weather station acquiring meteorological parameters (wind speed and direction, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, air temperature and humidity and solar radiation), a surface buoy, moored outside the Civitavecchia harbour, and in situ water samplings provided data comparable with the fixed station. In support of the system a high resolution hydrodynamical model was used to calculate current and waves parameters around and inside the harbour area, allowing us to analyse the conservative constituents (e.g. suspended solids) behaviour. At the end of 2012 considerable modifications were made on the harbour structures, concerning Colombo breakwater extension and new Dock Services. The present work reports the observations on main water parameters before and after the cited works, comparing them with the results of model simulations. © 2014 WIT Press.