MEDSAL (2019: HFRI PRIMA)

MEDSAL Project aims to secure availability and quality of groundwater reserves in Mediterranean coastal areas, which are one of the most vulnerable regions in the world in terms of water scarcity and quality degradation. This objective will be addressed by providing a novel holistic approach directed towards sustainable management of coastal aquifers are affected by increased salinization risk.

The proposed framework is envisaged to integrate different tools, techniques and methods – such as environmental isotopes, hydrogeological and hydrogeochemical modelling, advanced geostatistics and deep learning techniques – into an innovative assessment and management approach to:

• identify salinization sources (single or multiple) and decipher their governing processes,
• assess potential interactions with other compartments (small scale) and with other systems at basin (large) scale,
  
• forecast the spatiotemporal evolution of primary salinization and secondary impacts,
• perform risk assessment under variable climatic projections, and
  
• develop a public web-GIS observatory to support monitoring, management and decision making.

MEDSAL project is strongly collaborative and carefully designed to have an impact and contribute to demand and policy driven research. It responds to Call Section 2 and specifically to Topic 1.1.1 “Water resources availability and quality within catchments and aquifers”. Corresponding to Topic’s challenge, it clearly contributes to the development of innovative integrated approaches and tools to ensure the availability of groundwater resources and, in particular to deal with seawater intrusion and salinization risks.

Overall, in line with Thematic Area 1, MEDSAL aims to secure water availability in terms of quality and quantity and enhance sustainable water resources management of arid and semi-arid areas through innovative tools and techniques; thus providing integrated solutions to improve resilience to water scarcity conditions.