XXXVIII CICLO | Paoletti Matteo

I’ve always enjoyed studying our planet’s landscapes and cultures, and I love diving into geography and to draw maps. Whether understanding Earth’s forces or delving into geology, I’m eager to learn more I’m just as comfortable crunching numbers behind a screen as hiking through the wilderness. I enjoy using my programming skills to dig into data and trying to reproduce the natural scenario through numerical models.

The project concerns the interactions of quarries and mines with groundwater. The objective is to identify criteria and methods useful for monitoring, control, and management of mining activities to optimize economic activity and mitigate impacts on groundwater resources. From national databases of active and decommissioned quarries and mines, representative cases will be selected by type of quarry and mine and impacts on groundwater. Representative cases will be analysed to assess the effects on groundwater flow dynamics and vulnerability to groundwater contamination. The methods used in this phase will be those of hydrogeology and hydrogeochemistry to acquire the elements for numerical modelling of flow and mass transport. Numerical modelling will simulate different hydrogeological scenarios to test the effects on groundwater flow and vulnerability to contamination.

This phase of the activity will identify possible solutions to maximize the exploitation of minerals and geomaterials and, at the same time, to limit the impact on groundwater resources.