EarthSea investigates the ways in which literature and visual media addressed forms of water-soil relationships– with a particular focus on land subsidence – in the context of the Po Delta in Italy. The Po Delta, a significant anthropogenic river delta in Europe, endured a long history of disruptive soil transformations (rising sea levels, land erosion, and subsidence), primarily due to human activities such as natural gas extraction from the 1940s to the early 1960s. From the 1960s to the 1980s, due to previous gas extraction in the Po Delta, the area experienced one of the worst examples of land subsidence in Europe’s history. The project’s overarching aim is to provide a transdisciplinary approach to land subsidence and soil transformations by connecting scientific, cultural, and community-based accounts. In this way, the project examines both the process by which land subsidence and other forms of soil-based disruptions entered public opinion, or conversely, disappeared from the debate. In order to achieve this transdisciplinary representation of land subsidence in the Po Delta, EarthSea followed the following objectives:
1. To collect and analyze literary and visual materials that contributed to shaping the representation of land subsidence and soil transformations in the deltaic area over time;
2. To trace the history of land subsidence through archival work;
3. To investigate the impact of land subsidence on local communities by conducting ethnographic fieldwork in selected areas of the Po Delta;
4. To introduce new concepts that facilitate studying forms of environmental disruption in the Po Delta by integrating scientific research with cultural and ethnographic perspectives.
The project centered on the necessity of approaching the deltaic soil not in isolation, as often pursued by quantitative hydrogeological and geomorphological studies, but as the result of individual and collective stories, where cultural productions, oral histories, and scientific studies intersect or enter into friction.
