(ANSA) - ROME, APR 24 - Lake Garda in northern Italy has reached its lowest level since 1953, new satellite data has shown.
The lake, the largest in Italy and bordering with the regions of Lombardy and Veneto and the autonomous province of Trento, has fallen to just 45.8 cm above the hydrometric zero, the elevation above mean sea level established as a conventional reference for this basin.
This compares to an average of 109 cm over the past 70 years.
The data comes from the Sentinel-2 satellite in the framework of the Copernicus European Drought Observatory run by the European Commission and the European Space Agency.
Lake Garda is a crucial freshwater reservoir and its current capacity threatens its ability to sustain agriculture, local communities, tourism and navigation.
Lake Garda or Benaco has an area of about 370 sqkm and is the third lake in Italy for depth after Lake Como and Lake Maggiore. The average water level of Lake Garda, which lies about 65 meters above sea level, normally undergoes only very limited seasonal variations, especially when compared to the other large pre-alpine lakes, making the recent drop all the more concerning.
The new satellite images of the lake corroborate other images testifying to the drought that is gripping Italy and Europe, including the recent image of the Po River processed by the Cosmo-SkyMed constellation of the Italian Space Agency and Ministry of Defense.
Similarly, images from the European Space Agency's Smos satellite show that soil moisture is below average in much of southwestern Europe due to a winter that was not only particularly dry but also the second warmest on record.
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