Arborea is one of the most productive agricultural sites in Italy with a milk productivity among the highest in Europe. 

In the past, it was an insalubrious swamp infested by mosquitoes bearing malaria disease. During the years 1920–1930, a huge land reclamation work was implemented for the entire plain: sand dunes were flattened and transformed into agricultural land and brackish and salted wetlands were drained by pumping water from below the sea level. A fertile plane was then generated consisting of rectangulare fields (2 to 4 ha) delimited and protected by eucalyptus edges and surrounded by a drainage network consisting of main channels and a dense network of smaller drainage channels. 

Nowadays, Arborea is equipped with a modern system of agro-zootechnical companies, cooperative processing industries, an advanced system of associated services and a diversified range of activities that make it one of the more advanced areas of Sardinia.The farmers’ cooperative includes more than 200 farms managing some 30,000 dairy cattle on a 6,000-ha irrigated plain.

In the plain, the MENAWARA action consists in the implementation of a Forested Infiltration Area (FIA) system over a surface of around 0.7 ha by using drainage water, which usually flows to wetlands, to recharge the sandy phreatic aquifer (SHU) through a Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) technique, without compromising the minimum vital flow of the drainage network and wetlands.

👉The aim is to test the FIA technique as best practice which could be integrated by the Regional Agency of the Hydrographic District (ADIS) into the Sardinia Basin Management Plan as a possible tool to mitigate the quantitative-qualitative degradation of groundwater not only in the Arborea plain but also in similar hydrogeological context.