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The Danube Delta Environment Changes Generated by Human Activities

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The Danube River Delta

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Abstract

Especially since the middle of the 19-th century, the Danube Delta environment has undergone continuous changes generated by important anthropogenic works on the main delta distributaries and also inside the delta territory, as meander bends cut-offs, embankments, etc. The chapter focuses on the St. George distributary and tries to document the environmental changes induced by meander belts cut-off programmes in the 1981–1992 interval. Three meanders of the distributary are called Mahmudia (located between km 84,0 and 64,0), the Upper Dunavăţ (between km 58,1 and 54,7) and the Lower Dunavăţ (between km 53,8 and 49,5) have been studied. Several aspects of the cut-off works impact have been revealed and quantified: strong erosion processes on the cut-off canals, significant clogging processes on the natural courses, increasing of the water and sediments fluxes on the cut-off canals, limitation of penetration of waters and sediments from the distributary to intra-deltaic depressions, etc.

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Acknowledgements

The research was fouded by the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization Core Program, Projects PN16450503 (Contract no. 37N/2016) and PN19200401 (Contract no. 13N/08.02.2019) and Project AMBIACVA (Contract 23PFE/30.12.2021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research-Development Institute for Marine Geology and Geoecology – GeoEcoMar, 23-25 Dimitrie Onciul Street, RO-024053, Bucharest, Romania

    Laura Tiron Duţu, Nicolae Panin, Florin Duţu, Adrian Popa, Gabriel Iordache, Iulian Pojar & Irina Catianis

  2. Faculty of Geology and Geophysics, Doctoral School of Geology, University of Bucharest, Traian Vuia Street, no. 6, 020956, Bucharest, Romania

    Adrian Popa

  3. Faculty of Geography, Doctoral School “Simion Mehedinţi”, University of Bucharest, 1 Nicolae Bălcescu Blvd, 010041, Bucharest, Romania

    Gabriel Iordache

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  1. Laura Tiron Duţu
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  2. Nicolae Panin
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  3. Florin Duţu
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Correspondence to Florin Duţu .

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  1. Water and Water Structures Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt

    Abdelazim M. Negm

  2. Faculty of Geography, Centre for Integrated Analysis and Territorial Management, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Daniel Constantin Diaconu

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Tiron Duţu, L. et al. (2022). The Danube Delta Environment Changes Generated by Human Activities. In: Negm, A.M., Diaconu, D.C. (eds) The Danube River Delta. Earth and Environmental Sciences Library. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-03983-6_1

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