Publication Date:
2022-11-18
Description:
Augusta Bay is an embayment of the Hyblean sector in south-eastern Sicily (Southern Italy)
that faces the Ionian Sea and includes the Rada di Augusta, a wide littoral sector sheltered by breakwaters,
which hosts intense harbor activities. Rada di Augusta and the adjacent Priolo embayment
were listed in the National Remediation Plan (NRP) by the Italian Ministry of Environment, as they
have suffered major anthropic impacts over the last seventy years. Indeed, extensive petrochemical
and industrial activities, military and commercial maritime traffic, as well as agriculture and fishery
activities, have resulted in a highly complex combination of impacts on the marine environment
and seafloor. In this paper, we investigate the extent of human-driven physical impacts on the
continental shelf, offshore of Rada di Augusta, by means of Multibeam echosounder, Side-Scan
Sonar and Chirp Sonar profilers, as well as direct seabed samplings. At least seven categories of
anthropogenic footprints, i.e., anchor grooves and scars, excavations, trawl marks, targets, dumping
trails, isolated dumping and dumping cumuli, mark the recent human activities at the seafloor. The
practice of dredge spoil disposal, possibly protracted for decades during the last century, has altered
the seafloor morphology of the central continental shelf, by forming an up-to-9 m-thick hummocky
deposit, with acoustic features noticeably different from those of any other shelf lithosome originated
by natural processes. All available data were reported in an original thematic map of the seafloor
features, offering an unprecedented opportunity to unravel sediment facies distribution and localization
of anthropogenic disturbance. Finally, the shelf area was ranked, based on the coexistence of
multiple stressors from human-driven physical harm, thus providing a semi-quantitative analysis of
environmental damage classification in the area.
Description:
Published
Description:
1737
Description:
3A. Geofisica marina e osservazioni multiparametriche a fondo mare
Description:
JCR Journal
Repository Name:
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
Type:
article
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