Italian authorities plan to expand Venice’s port into a bustling shipping hub with a new terminal, further “endangering” the fragile lagoon and contributing to the sinking of the city, it has been claimed.
Venice in Peril, a British conservation group that works to preserve the treasured city, said on Monday a report it obtained from the local port authority showed plans to accommodate more and bigger ships in a bid to compete with other European harbours.
The Venice port authority confirmed it had written the report, but insisted the works will respect the environment and are necessary to deal with the growing flow of tourists and goods.
The debate illustrates the complex and often controversial balancing act between protecting the UNESCO World Heritage Site and exploiting a sea port that gives easy access to prosperous areas of northern Italy and central Europe, as well as rapidly developing markets in the Balkans.
The report drawn up for the Italian Senate outlines ongoing and future works including the continued dredging of passages in the shallow lagoon to allow larger vessels in and the construction of a new shipping terminal in the long-declining mainland industrial zone of Porto Marghera.
The port authority is spending at least 260 million (£230 million) to dredge inlets and navigation channels to allow the passage of ships of up to 1,300 feet in length.
This is particularly concerning for conservationists because dredging and heavy ship traffic are seen as one of the causes of the rising sea level in the lagoon, which threatens the low-lying islands on which the historic city is built.
“The fact that big ships have access to the lagoon has important consequences for its health,” said Jane da Mosto, a researcher for Venice in Peril. “Apart from environmental concerns … the problem of high tide is accentuated, so it means more flooding for Venice.”
Under the combined effect of rising water levels and settling of the land, Venice has sunk nine inches in the last century.
Most experts agree that the waves generated by large ships and the currents that run through the deep passageways play a big part, displacing and dragging out to sea the sandbanks and other sediments that help keep water out.
In winter, Venice periodically goes through bouts of acqua alta (high water), when strong winds and high tides conspire to push the sea into streets and piazzas, forcing tourists and locals alike to wear rubber boots and teeter along impromptu bridges.
The rising sea level has increased the frequency of the floods, and in December, Venice suffered its worst deluge in 22 years. Experts warn the problem could further worsen in the coming decades as climate change causes sea levels to rise globally.
The port authority report dismisses environmental concerns by declaring them solved thanks to a project to build towering movable barriers designed to rise from the seabed and prevent flooding.
The 4.3 billion euro system, named Moses, is expected to be operational by 2014.
“The problem of the hydraulic equilibrium is solved because it will be manageable through judicious use of the Moses system,” the report says.
But some experts disagree.
The Moses barriers block shipping so they would only be raised when an exceptionally high tide is expected. That would not lower the average sea level and stop the waters from slowly eating away at Venice’s bricks and stones, said Luigi D’Alpaos, professor of hydrodynamics at the University of Padua.
“Moses will, at best, manage the acqua alta,” he said. “But the other problems are not at all addressed by the barriers.”
Officials at the Venice port authority said the dredging is needed to restore the navigation channels, which are filling up with silt, to their original depth. They said the digging will not go beyond the depth allowed by law and any expansions on land will be done within the existing port zone.
But Venice in Peril said work should be done instead to reduce the depth of the channels, where possible, or at least reconstruct the natural lagoon features that protected the city for centuries.
D’anciennes séquences d’ADN prélevées sur des squelettes archéologiques réservent toujours de nouvelles surprises sur la préhistoire de l’espèce humaine. En 2005, une équipe de chercheurs réunie autour du paléogénéticien Joachim Burger, Université de Mayence, Allemagne, avait déjà révélé que les premiers cultivateurs européens n’étaient pas les ancêtres des Européens d’aujourd’hui. Cette découverte avait de quoi surprendre, puisque ces premiers cultivateurs s’étaient en effet sédentarisés et avaient établi tout un mode de vie qui devait s’avérer déterminant pout tout le continent. Dans une nouvelle étude publiée dans la revue SCIENCE – accessible dès à présent en ligne -, l’équipe de chercheurs de Mayence compare alors les premiers cultivateurs européens aux derniers chasseurs-cueilleurs du continent.
Les chercheurs de Mayence, assistés de leurs collègues britanniques et estoniens, ont extrait et analysé l’ADN mitochondrial des ossements fossiles de 22 de ces chasseurs-cueilleurs. Leur analyse a permis de vérifier que les chasseurs-cueilleurs ne pouvaient être les ancêtres des premiers cultivateurs qui avaient dû immigrer. “Nous pouvons exactement fixer la date de cette immigration à 7.500 ans avant notre ère”, déclare Barbara Bramanti, auteure de l’étude. Quant à l’origine des premiers cultivateurs d’Europe centrale, elle ajoute: “Grâce à des simulations sur ordinateur, nous avons pu vérifier avec certitude la discontinuité entre ces deux groupes et en avons conclu que les cultivateurs ne pouvaient être originaires que du bassin des Carpates.”
du Proche-Orient, où il apparut pour la première fois, avait été adopté. Lors des dernières décennies, les archéologues européens admettaient de plus en plus le rôle prépondérant des traditions locales en Europe. Les récentes découvertes semblent vouloir profondément remettre en question cette façon de voir. “Même si des contacts et échanges culturels ont pu exister entre chasseurs-cueilleurs et cultivateurs, on est de plus en plus obligé d’admettre l’image d’une gamète néolithique en Europe du Sud qui, par la suite, a été déterminante pour l’histoire du continent”, déclare Joachim Burger en ajoutant: “Pourtant, il ne s’agit probablement que d’un maillon d’une chaîne qui remonte plus loin, au lieu d’origine de la sédentarisation agricole en Anatolie et au Proche-Orient.”
Europe’s first farmers replaced their Stone-Age hunter-gatherer forerunners: Analysis of ancient DNA from skeletons suggests that Europe’s first farmers were not the descendants of the people who settled the area after the retreat of the ice sheets. Instead, the early farmers probably migrated into major areas of central and eastern Europe about 7,500 years ago, bringing domesticated plants and animals with them, says Barbara Bramanti from Mainz University in Germany and colleagues. The researchers analyzed DNA from hunter-gatherer and early farmer burials, and compared those to each other and to the DNA of modern Europeans. They conclude that there is little evidence of a direct genetic link between the hunter-gatherers and the early farmers, and 82 percent of the types of mtDNA found in the hunter-gatherers are relatively rare in central Europeans today.
Now, a team from Mainz University in Germany together with researchers from University College London and Cambridge have found that the first farmers in central and northern Europe could not have been the descendents of the hunter-gatherers that came before them. But what is even more surprising, they also found that modern Europeans could not be solely the descendents of the hunter-gatherers or the first farmers, and are unlikely to be a mixture of just those two groups. “This is really odd,” said Professor Mark Thomas, population geneticist at University College London and co-author on the study. “For more than a century the debate has centered around how much hunter-gatherer, how much early farmer? But now that: For the first time, we are able to look directly at the genes of these Stone Age Europeans. And what we find is that some DNA types just aren’t there, despite being common in Europeans today.”
new people or whether only the idea of farming spread. The new results from the Mainz team seem to solve much of this long-standing debate. “Our analysis shows that there is no direct continuity between hunter-gatherers and farmers in Central Europe,” says Professor Joachim Burger from Mainz University. “As the hunter-gatherers were there first, the farmers must have immigrated into the area.” The study identifies the Carpathian Basin as the origin for early Central European farmers. “It seems that farmers of the Linearbandkeramik culture immigrated from there 7,500 years ago into Central Europe, initially without mixing with local hunter gatherers.” Barbara Bramanti, first author of the study adds: “This is surprising, because there were cultural contacts between the locals and the immigrants, but, it appears, no genetic exchange of women.”
Despite frequent warnings by the experts, one of the most unique Parthian sites in Iran-proper known as the Kuh-e Khajeh (Parthian Ushida) remains in danger of total destruction, and the cultural authorities have not take any action to ensure its protection.
In June 2006, Mohammadali Ebrahimi, the director of Sistan and Baluchestan province’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department asserted that the area badly needs vegetation to neutralize the destructive impacts of the strong winds, which occur for four months of the year with speeds reaching 120 km per hour. Despite his warnings in August 2006 one of the eastern walls of the palace has collapsed.
The Kuh-e Khwajeh historical complex is one of the most significant archaeological sites in Iran and the biggest model of unbaked mud brick architecture remaining in Sistan region, which dates back to the Parthian dynasty (248 BCE-224 CE).
The oldest and by far the most important structure of the site is an ancient fortress found on the eastern slope, referred to under various connotations such as Rostam’s castle, the Kāferūn castle, Kohan-Dež, etc.
V(otum) S(olvit) L(ibens) M(erito) 
You must be logged in to post a comment.