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From Locride to Rimini, passing through the small beaches that survive between the ports and artificial reefs, then ending with the “pocket beaches” of Asinara. It is an area of 120 square kilometers, almost as much as the territory of the Municipality of Ostia in Rome, the one occupied by Italian beaches.
A space that is not “too large”, half distributed between Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia, which has to deal with erosion and phenomena that cause temporary or permanent changes.
The census
This scenario is outlined in the latest census carried out by Ispra to update the state of the coasts and beaches and, at the same time, study the erosion phenomena caused by wind and climate change but also by human intervention. The report also serves to “photograph” the state of things and identify any areas at risk.
The study, carried out through a system that combines orthophotos and satellite images, shows that on average Italian beaches are about 35 meters deep and occupy about 41% of the coast, almost 3.4 thousand kilometers out of a total of more than 8.3 thousand kilometers.
In the south, 2/3 of Italian beaches
Furthermore, the graphs developed highlight that the distribution of surface area by length of coastline occupied by beaches is not at all uniform between the various regions. “It is those in the south and the larger islands that constitute over two thirds of Italian beaches – underlines the report -, while regions such as Liguria or Emilia-Romagna find themselves having to manage a relatively small resource”. The conditions do not change much if we consider the surface values of Italian beaches. The southern regions are worth half of the national surface area and Calabria alone, 20% of the total.
