All articles tagged with #lagoon
Venice’s Mose flood barriers have kept the city dry since 2020, but faster sea-level rise is forcing talk of a Plan B. Raised activation levels and staggered closures could harm the lagoon’s ecology and cost hundreds of thousands of euros per operation; the Lagoon Authority is seeking global ideas to reinvent Venice’s future beyond tourism to protect its lagoon and heritage.
European researchers compared four protection strategies for Venice against rising seas—open-lagoon closure with movable barriers, ring dikes, fully enclosing the lagoon by raising barrier islands, or relocating residents and monuments. Their projections show the open-lagoon approach becomes unreliable by around 2300 under even low-emission futures; ring dikes could work but would disrupt lagoon ecosystems and cost €0.5–4.5B; enclosing the lagoon could guard against up to 10 meters of rise but costs €30B+, sacrifices the lagoon ecosystem and port function; relocation is the costliest at about €100B and ends Venice's role as a functioning port. Large-scale projects could take up to 50 years to implement, underscoring the need for early planning.
Researchers map how Venice and its lagoon face escalating sea-level rise, outlining four main adaptation paths—open lagoon with MoSE, ring-dikes, closed lagoon, and retreat—showing the adaptation space shrinking with higher seas, identifying tipping points where transitions become unavoidable, and weighing the trade-offs among monuments, lagoon ecosystems, living culture, and the local economy to stress the need for early, coordinated action and large-scale planning to avoid the most disruptive outcomes.