(12 feb) Trento – Guglielmo Stecca is a researcher at the University of Trento; with a PhD in Environmental Engineering in his pocket, Stecca is ready to go to New Zealand where he will be involved in a project on the impact of dams and the management and redevelopment of rivers. The aims of the research project – christened BraidSideEarth, short for “The Braided Side of the Earth” – are to study how the rivers respond to changes in the flow and sediment regime caused by dams, and to develop predictive tools (a numerical model) that allow to quantify, in advance, the possible impacts of dams and then try to mitigate their effects; in the case of the rivers that have already been altered, the model will suggest strategies for redevelopment. BraidSideEarth will take place between the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Trento (which is the main venue of the project) and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in Christchurch, the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand. The project lasts three years, and will begin in April. “During the first two years – explains Stecca – I will serve as visiting research fellow at NIWA, returning to Trento for the final year. The ultimate goal is to define new management strategies for some European rivers affected by the presence of dams, so as to recover environmental health. New Zealand – he adds – provides, from a European point of view, the opportunity to go back in time and observe rivers in their almost original condition. The fact that few man-made alterations are present in New Zealand, or that they are very recent, also gives us the opportunity to study the still ongoing changes in rivers. We will use an approach that combines hydraulics, fluvial geomorphology, ecology and applied mathematics.”
