>>Dr. Doug Elmore: Now we will go on a virtual
field trip to Venice, Italy. Notice in this
first picture there is high water in Venice.
That is the problem that Venice has been dealing
with for a number of years. Why does Venice
have a problem with high water? There are
several reasons: subsidence, sea level rise,
and high tides. We are also going to focus
on how Venice is trying to solve their problem.
That will come later in this virtual field
trip.
But first, let's look at some more pictures.
The picture on the left shows a gondola, but
also notice the house in the background. There's
a door that's partly covered by water. What
has happened? Well, that house has sunk and
the water level is now in the lower levels
of that house. The picture on the right is
of St. Mark's Square, the major square in
Venice. Where is Venice, Italy? Well, the
red arrow in this map view shows where Venice
is. It's at the head of the Adriatic Sea in
the northern part of Italy. In the next slide,
we see a close-up that shows Venice as an
island, actually a group of islands, separated
from the Adriatic by barrier islands called
the Lido, and the mainland is to the left.
So you can see a large inlet there where seawater
comes in and out of because of tides into
the Venice lagoon. And that is one of the
reasons that Venice has problems with high
water is high tides come in and cause parts
of the city to be flooded.
Here are several close-up maps of Venice showing
that Venice is actually made up of a number
of islands and lots of canals, obviously,
as you can see right there. And in the next
slide you'll notice one of the pictures has
very high water. The picture on the right
is of Venice and the canals without high water.
And then the lower picture is of a door within
Venice, but notice the water damage along
the bottom of the door. Now I'd like you to
go to the website listed at the top of this
slide. This website explains the problems
that Venice is having with high water and
what the solution is. You should particularly
look at the simulations for the gates they
are planning to build and have actually built
to control the flooding through the inlets.
After you're done with that, I would like
you to answer the six questions that are at
the bottom of the slide. And also think: how
does Venice or the situation in Venice compare
with the situation in New Orleans? How is
it similar, and how is it different?
