Groundwater Contamination from Agricultural Sources in Northern Italy: Long-Term Monitoring and Mathematical Modelling

The province of Pavia, in Northern Italy, is an intensively cultivated agricultural area with substantial urban development Groundwater supplies constitute almost all the potable water available to the resident population. Concern exists about the fate of herbicides applied to farm fields that have been found in measurable quantities in drinking water supplies. This paper describes at first the general environmental conditions and land use activity pattern in which the diffuse contamination occurs, history of contaminant detection is correlated to external interventions, such as government regulations, and the findings of the monitoring process are then illustrated. A mathematical model of groundwater transport is then illustrated and its predictions are compared with monitoring findings.