Analysis of the Periodic Component of Vertical Land Motion in the Po Delta (Northern Italy) by GNSS and Hydrological Data

Abstract

Nowadays, several methodologies, implemented for satellite or terrestrial surveys, reveal that daily and weekly site-positioning time series can exhibit linear trends plus seasonal oscillations. Such periodic components affect the evaluation of subsidence rates and, thus, they must be recognized and properly modelled. In this work, the periodic component of vertical land motion in Po Delta (Northern Italy) is estimated by a multi-component and multi-source procedure recently proposed by some of the authors for studying land subsidence in delta areas. First, land vertical motion data, acquired in the central part of the Po Delta over a six-year time interval, were compared with hydro-meteorological and climate datasets collected from nineteen stations distributed over the entire Delta. Then, four physically based models of the test site were implemented to verify the water pressure- and water mass-dependent processes inferred from the analytical phase. Modelling results show that the annual ground oscillation is better explained by soil moisture change, although river water mass variation gives a relevant contribution to land deformation, especially in the wet periods. Finally, to account for intra-annual processes, the joint contributions of all the inferred sources were treated as a nonlinear problem and solved applying the generalized reduced gradient method. The obtained combination is well supported by statistical parameters and provides the best agreement with the geodetic observations.