Application of Airborne Electromagnetics to Effective Hydrogeological Modelling of Delicate Coastal Areas

Understanding the hydrogeological processes is critical for a sound management of water resources in coastal areas. Here lie the majority of human settlements and industrial production. Moreover, human pressure on the environment is constantly increasing, and many studies predict a rising of seawater level in the next 50 years, raging from a few cm up to some tens of cm, depending on location. These are common characteristics of most coastal areas, wetlands, lagoons, and estuaries which also have unique flora and fauna depending on the groundwater-surface water processes. The application of airborne electromagnetics (AEM) for groundwater monitoring and modeling has been steadily rising in the past decade, due to parallel developments of better AEM systems together with processing and inversion methologies. It can greatly improve the data quality and coverage in tidal and coastal areas, together with lagoons, esturaries, and river deltas while cutting significantly the acquisition costs and providing vital informations on issues like saline water intrusion etc. In this paper we present results and applications of AEM to hydrogeological modelling of the Venice lagoon, where the methodology greatly improved the understanding of the general hydrogeology, both within, below and in the proximity of the lagoon.