The Department of Geography – deals with both physical and social aspects of geography (demography, agricultural geography, geomorphology, hydrogeography, littoralization, etc.), covering coastal and insular Croatia with solid GIS implementation. Marine geology is a division within the department.
Geology: Dr. Suric the lead marine geologist at UNIZD studies speleothems in submerged caves in order to reconstruct relative sea-level changes. Since 2005 Dr. Suric has published several very important papers in the field. Natural conditions in the Croatian Adriatic are favourable. The greatest CIMMAR related expansion in dimension of Dr. Saric’s work will come from the added inter- and transdisciplinary data matrix collected alongside geological data which will assure a much more complete understanding of sea level changes in particular and the influence of all kinds of confounding variables, including natural and anthropogenic.
Geography: The Department of Geography was founded in 1994 and since then its staff has been involved in various scientific projects related to the marine and maritime environment focusing on Croatian island development, demography, and littoralization processes. The department employs 11 doctorates and 7 assistants. All employees of the geography department are trained in GIS. Substantial amounts of data have been collected and reported in 20+ publications since 2007. Ongoing research of this unit focuses on hydrological relationships in the contact area of land and sea. i.e. to predict the degree of salt intrusion into coastal aquifers and water sources due to increased drought and sealevel rise. Such research will be able to generate innovations needed for the implementation of socio-economic adaptations, i.e. based on novel technologies of high relevance for the Mediteranean and many coastal communities facing freshwater shortages. Building a transdisciplinary and comprehensive regional geographical information system generates powerful tools to uncover patterns and to monitor and predict changes which constitutes filling an important gap.