The Springs of Poiano

Accessibility
From the bridge of Gatta (Town of Castelnovo ne' Monti), along the SP 9, you descend from the town and proceed towards the banks of the river Secchia on a town a road, the springs of Poiano are reached about 2 km.

Tourist Area
Parco Nazionale dell'Appennino Tosco-emiliano

Geograpich Area
Apennines

Additional information
From the Poiano springs area you can admire the majestic walls of the Triassic gypsums of the Secchia river.

Description
The Poiano Springs are the main carsic springs of Emilia-Romagna. Unlike most Springs and carsistic springs, whose characteristics relating to the chemical-physical features, remain unaltered for very long periods, the Poiano springs have demonstrated that they are subject to a very quick temporal evolution. Their main characteristic is their characteristic of Sodium Chloride.
To use the thermal characteristics of the waters of this location a structure with 2 pools having different temperatures was built. Scientific Description
The most abundant carsic spring of the region, with an average capacity beyond 700 I/sec., is salted. And it was a lot saltier in 1612: su much to induce Cosimo Bottegari, musician and observant traveler, to write to the Duke of Modena:...as I've tasted various times, and have found it so salted, that it seemed a miracle: besides that I even remained even more capable, through such a huge and continuous abundance, it was like a running river, and looking at each place where it had wet the soil, there was a surface of such candidness, as if covered by a white veil: this whiteness I wanted to taste, and I found it not unlike, thick and pure salt...
It is obvious that the waters of Poiano must have been overly saturated with Sodium chloride, with a content near theoretic solubility of NaCl (357 g n/liter at 1 00 1). The measurements of salt content at Poiano, even though done sporadically only in the last century, show a progressive and rapid decrease on NaCl content (See chart). A complete hydro-chemical measuring of this carsic area, done in 1984, found that all the parameters of Poiano waters (capacity, temperature, chlorides, sulfates, etc.) are not constant but follow a precise seasonal flow with a temporal delay of about 5 months relative to the values found in external water courses. The remarkable influence of the alternating seasons on the Poiano springs constitutes a strong primary clue on the fact that this carsic spring is fed by a mixture of waters with absolutely different chemism (and provenance): the first bicarbonate sulfate, clearly prevailing in quantity and deriving from the meteo-carsic waters, and a second chlorided which is a lot less influenced by local Pluvialmetric waters. The tracing of the carsic feeding basin at last showed that the springs are feed by: Meteoric waters which infiltrate the fractures, dolines and mouths on the evaporites sides degrading towards the Lucola torrent;
from the leakage on the left of the Lucola hydro-graph;
from underground supplies, coming from the basin of the Sologno torrent; by another hydrological circuit which reaches in depth the levels of rock salt and returns up to the spring because of concomitant factors:
- diapirico effect;
- hydration of the anhydrides at great depths;
- effect of the water-proof barrier of the tectonic base contacts of the formation.
Poiano is therefore fed by a mixture of quick carsic waters (the carsic tunnel of Mt Pianella has a time of just a little over 478 hours) with a small fraction of chlorate waters whose exact origin is still not perfectly understood, as is deduced by the isotopic analysis done, it is however to be considered of recent infiltration.