Recent geomorphological evolution of the deltas of the rivers Seman and Vjosa, Albania
Authors: Fouache Eric , Gruda Gjovalin , Mucaj Skender , Nikolli Pal 
Published: August 2002

AbstractRising in the Neogene hills of the Mallakaster, the rivers Seman and Vjosa have built up two large joint deltas on the Albanian Adriatic shore. This shoreline is characterized by a low sandy coast with bars and spits. Changes in the river courses and migration of the mouths of the deltas were rapid and numerous from the Holocene period until the beginning of drainage works in the 1950s. The drainage basins of the two rivers are developed in soft clastic rocks (flysch and molasse) in the proportion of 71·4 per cent for the Seman and 44·8 per cent for the Vjosa. Both rivers carry abundant sediment loads, amounting to 6·7 × 106 tonnes per year for the Vjosa and 13·2 × 106 tonnes per year for the Seman. This is the reason why the alluvial deposits of the Seman have built up two‐thirds of the alluvial plain.The use of a SPOT image dated 25 May 1995 (HRV 3 081‐268) enabled us to view the effects of coastal and fluvial dynamics, the role of neotectonics as well as the predominance of the plume of suspended sediment of the Seman river. Using this image, a geomorphological map was drawn, which identifies the palaeochannels of the Seman and the Vjosa. In order to date those palaeochannels we have made an archaeological inventory from oral and written published information. The location of the sites we studied was checked systematically in the field. The mediaeval and Ottoman archives kept in Tirana also provided substantial information, as well as the reconstitution of the evolution of the shoreline between 1870 and 1990, carried out using an inventory of topographic maps. This work allowed us to reconstitute the progression of the deltas of the Seman and the Vjosa since antiquity.We may then infer that from antiquity up to the Middle Ages, the deltas of the Seman and the Vjosa both progressed very moderately and in a comparable way. However, at the end of the 15th century the Seman underwent a major change in its course, through a southward migration of the river. The natural processes of alluviation and changes in the river courses seem to have been accelerated as agricultural exploitation of the Neogene hills that form most of the drainage basin of the Seman increased. This exploitation is linked with the massive exportation of cereal from the port of Skela e Pirgut, which started in the 14th century. It appears that the 20th century has been the period of the largest progression of the deltas during historical times. The speed of progression increased as early as the beginning of the century, as a result of the rapid growth of the rural population densities. Soil erosion from arable fields increased catchment sediment yields to promote rapid changes in the river courses. This resulted in abandonment of deltaic mouths, a phenomenon leading to a straightening of the coast. Thus to the south of the present mouth of the Seman the coast receded by 7 to 30 m per year between 1968 and 1990 as a result of the abandonment of a mouth. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.