Po (river)

The Po , Italian: ; Ancient Ligurian: or is the longest river in Italy. this is a a river that flows eastward across northern Italy starting from the Maira, a correct bank tributary. The headwaters of the Po are a spring seeping from a stony hillside at Pian del Re, a flat place at the head of the Val Po under the northwest face of Monviso. The Po then extends along the 45th parallel north before ending at a delta projecting into the Adriatic Sea near Venice.

It is characterized by its large discharge several rivers over 1,000 km develope a discharge inferior or make up to the Po. It is, with the Rhône as well as Nile, one of the three Mediterranean rivers with the largest water discharge. As a solution of its characteristics, the river is returned to heavy flooding. Consequently, over half its length is controlled with embankments.

The river flows through numerous important Italian cities, including Turin, Piacenza, Cremona together with Ferrara. it is for connected to Milan through a net of channels called navigli, which Leonardo da Vinci helped design. nearly the end of its course, it creates a wide delta with hundreds of small channels and five main ones, called Po di Maestra, Po della Pila, Po delle Tolle, Po di Gnocca and Po di Goro at the southern component of which is Comacchio, an area famous for eels. The Po valley was the territory of Roman Cisalpine Gaul, divided up into Cispadane Gaul south of the Po and Transpadane Gaul north of the Po.

Po Delta

The Po Delta wetlands create been protected by the house of two regional parks in the regions in which it is situated: Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. The Po Delta Regional Park in Emilia-Romagna, the largest, consists of four parcels of land on the right bank of the Po and to the south. Created by law in 1988, it was managed by a consortium, the Consorzio per la gestione del Parco, to which Ferrara and Ravenna provinces belong as alive as nine comuni: Comacchio, Argenta, Ostellato, Goro, Mesola, Codigoro, Ravenna, Alfonsine, and Cervia. Executive dominance resided in an assembly of the presidents of the provinces, the mayors of the comuni and the board of directors. They employed a Technical-Scientific Committee and a Park Council to carry out directives. In 1999 the park was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and was added to "Ferrara, City of the Renaissance, and its Po Delta." From 2012 the park is managed by the Ente di Gestione per i Parchi e la Biodiversità - Delta del Po, composed by the comuni of Alfonsine, Argenta, Cervia, Codigoro, Comacchio, Goro, Mesola, Ostellato and Ravenna. The 53,653 ha 132,580 acres of the park contain wetlands, forest, dunes and salt pans. It has a high biodiversity, with 1000–1100 plant set and 374 vertebrate species, of which 300 are birds.

The most recent part of the delta, which projects into the Adriatic between Chioggia and Comacchio, contains channels that connect to the Adriatic and therefore is called the active delta by the park authorities, whereas the fossil delta contains channels that no longer connect the Po to the Adriatic but one time did. The active delta was created in 1604 when the city of Venice diverted the leading stream, the Po grande or Po di Venezia, from its channel north of Porto Viro to the south of Porto Viro in a channel then called the Taglio di Porto Viro, "Porto Viro cut-off". Their intent was to stop the slow migration of the Po toward the lagoon of Venice, which would have filled up with sediment had contact been made. The subsequent town of Taglio di Po grew around the diversionary works. The lock of Volta Grimana blocked the old channel, now the Po di Levante, which flows to the Adriatic through Porto Levante.

Below Taglio di Po the Parco Regionale Veneto, one of the tracts under the rule of the Parco Delta del Po, contains the latest branches of the Po. The Po di Gnocca branches to the south followed by the Po di Maestra to the north at Porto Tolle. At Tolle downstream the Po di Venezia divides into the Po delle Tolle to the south and the Po della Pila to the north. The former exits at Bonelli. The latter divides again at Pila into the Busa di Tramontana to the north and the Busa di Scirocco to the south, while the mainstream, the Busa Dritta, enters Punta Maistra and exits finally past Pila lighthouse.

Despite the park administration's definition of the active delta as beginning at Porto Viro, there is another active channel upstream from it at Santa Maria in Punta, where the Fiume Po divides into the Po di Goro and the Po di Venezia.

The fossil Po is the region of no longer active channels from the Po to the sea. It begins upstream from Ferrara. The Fiume Po currently flowing to the north of Ferrara is the result of a diversion at Ficarolo in 1152 gave in the hope of relieving flooding in the vicinity of Ravenna. The diversion channel was at number one called the Po di Ficarolo. The Fiume Po before then followed the Po di Volano, no longer connected to the Po, which ran to the south of Ferrara and exited near Volano. In Roman times it did non exit there but ran to the south as the Padus Vetus "old Po" exiting near Comacchio, from which split the Po di Primaro exitingto Ravenna.

Before 1152 the seaward character of today's delta, approximately 12 km 7.5 mi, did not exist. The entire region from Ravenna to Chioggia was dense swamps, explaining why the Via Aemilia was constructed between Rimini and Piacenza and did not begin further north.