Search

This study has been carried out within a broader research project, RIADE, concerned with the characterization of the types of relationships existing between desertification processes and surfaceand groundwater observed and investigated in Objective 1 regions. The underlying assumption is that the deteriorating quality and diminishing quantity of a region’s water resources impact negatively on the development of all living things and on human organization, and thus represent a basic indicator of desertification, intended in its broadest sense as the degradation of bioproductive land. By re-processing the scientific results obtained for Sardinia during this project, we have developed a reference framework for the systematic representation of the types found, qualitatitive/quantitative natural or anthropogenic degradation phenomena/processes of water resources in Sardinia. Two distinct criteria have been adopted for the typological categorization of the deteriorating quality and diminishing quantity of water, both divorced from the environmental and regional context in which they occur.The first criterion is based on an analysis of water quantity and quality and on the “pollutant type”, along the lines suggested by the Italian Research Council’s National Group for Hydrogeological Disaster Protection (GNDCI); the second criterion uses the DPSIR model adopted by the European Environmental Agency (EEA), which defines five indicator categories for the state and evolution of the environment