A sustainable management and preservation of water supply reservoirs in Tuscany

The knowledge of the possible changes of reservoirs water resources availability and the conservation of reservoirs water-storage capacity is a fundamental aspect that has to be taken into consideration, not only by scientists, but also by water resources managers and by the companies dedicated to water supply. To apply the right strategies and design the future infrastructures, an accurate evaluation of the possible reduction in the water stored volume is therefore required. This effort is particularly important in the framework of climate change and reservoir sedimentation. Several reports on climate change, in fact, have underlined the problems related to the modification of precipitations regime, forecasting an increasing of drought periods for the Mediterranean area. Moreover, in the last decade, many are the researches that have forecast a sensible reduction of the existing reservoirs capacity in few years due to sedimentation phenomenon. Considering that a not negligible amount of drinking water in Tuscany is directly or indirectly supplied from reservoirs, a sustainability management of water resources cannot ignore the above highlighted problems. In the paper, the main results of a trend analysis of precipitation and temperature time series in Tuscany are reported and the possible effects on the reservoirs entering discharges are briefly discussed. A possible integrated system for monitoring and modelling the decreases in reservoirs water-storage capacity due to sedimentation is also briefly described.