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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Remote Sens.
Sec. Remote Sensing Time Series Analysis
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsen.2025.1574347
Positive Correlation Between Trends of Po River Discharge and Ocean Colour Trends of Chl and TSM in the Adriatic Sea
Provisionally accepted- National Research Council (CNR), Roma, Lazio, Italy
Coastal areas represent delicate and complex environments due to the interconnection between land and sea, where marine, fluvial and anthropogenic stressors combine threatening and undermining coastal health. Sea level rise and increasing storminess, for instance, lead to more frequent coastal flooding and habitat loss due to erosion; sediment supply by rivers, on the other hand, helps coastal areas to balance and restore habitat loss. However, excessive riverine nutrient inputs may lead to coastal eutrophication phenomena, putting coastal ecosystem as well as coastal communities at serious risk. Here, we compute high resolution (300 m) Chlorophyll-a (Chl) and Total Suspended Matter (TSM, a proxy for sediment concentration) trends over the Adriatic Sea by using the single sensors MERIS (from 2003 to 2012) and OLCI (from 2017-2024) data, to study the response of the marine ecosystem to human and/or environmental pressures, and thus for detecting coastal areas likely subject to eutrophication and/or sediment starvation. Such an analysis is complemented by Po River discharge data to investigate the role of river outputs in shaping the observed trends within the Adriatic basin. Our results reveal Chl and TSM trends in the northern part of the Adriatic basin being positively correlated with the Po River discharge during the investigated period, for both MERIS and OLCI data. Increases/decreases in the Po River outflow resulted in positive/negative Chl and TSM trends. Although a negative trend of Chl was documented within the Adriatic Sea in the last 25 years, Po River load fluctuations regulate long-and short-term, local trends of both Chl and TSM in the North Adriatic basin. This result suggests a direct relationship existing between river discharge and statistical trends of TSM and Chl in delta areas.
Keywords: remote sensing, coastal processes, total suspended matter, Chlorophyll, Adriatic sea, Statistical trends
Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 28 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Vona, Colella, Sammartino, Brando and Falcini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Federico Falcini, National Research Council (CNR), Roma, 00185, Lazio, Italy
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