An Engineered Lake Hides a Lost Village
The bell tower of a 14th-century church rises from the surface of Lake Resia (Reschensee in German), an artificial lake in the Italian Alps. This is the only visible structure of the village of Curon, which was submerged in 1950 to create a reservoir for a hydroelectric plant. The project, carried out by the Montecatini energy company, involved building a dam to unify two natural lakes, Reschensee and Mittersee. The project flooded 677 hectares of land, including 163 homes and fertile farmland, displacing the village's population of around 1,000 people.
The creation of this large body of water, with a capacity of 120 million cubic meters, changed the local area. Artificial reservoirs like Lake Resia have different thermal properties than surrounding land. They possess higher heat capacity and lower albedo, meaning they absorb more solar radiation. This can influence local meteorological conditions. The management of the reservoir for power generation causes significant fluctuations in water level. These changes are tracked using remote sensing technologies, including satellite altimetry and imagery. Scientists use data from satellites like Landsat and Sentinel to create time-series analyses of the lake's surface area and water volume, providing data on the region's hydrology without relying solely on ground-based sensors.