Research

The Venice lagoon has an average depth of one meter, and there is a continuing and increasing need to dredge and dispose sediment. The fundamental science question addressed by SIOSED is: could the dredged sediment be re-used in the lagoon without adverse ecological impact? The SIOSED approach is to dredge sediment and transplant it into sub-tidal banks in two different areas of the lagoon different by type of seafloor sediment. The banks are 35m long, 10m wide, and about 0.6m thick. They are monitored for 16 months using a combination of standard and novel biological, ecological, chemical and physical tools. The characteristics of the transplanted sediment are then compared to sediment before transplant and sediment from around the banks. This project will address whether characteristics of sediment change with translocation in different physicochemical environment, which will help identify, also on a toxicological basis, sediment suitability criteria oriented toward risk assessment, more realistic than would be achieved when considering only total chemical concentrations in the sediment before any transplant.