SOMMA-VESUVIUS

Prefazione - Indice

Prefazione

Vesuvius is probably the most famous volcano in the world because of the easy accessibility, the spectacular almost persistentactivity lasted far three centuries until 1944, and because of its largely documented eruptive history.
The history of volcanology itself begins at Vesuvius thanks to the description of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus of the A.D. 79"Pompei" eruption. Since that time hundreds of books and articles have been written dealing with the different aspects of the activity, structure, nature, geography of the volcano: the 290 references cited in the present monograph provide only a partial overview of the available documentation. This extremely abundant literature lacks, however, of papers containing a synthesis of volcanological data, being generally limited to specific arguments, here more geological or geophysical, and there more petrological or mineralogical.
At the end of 1983 I was entrusted with the preparation and editing of a monograph on Vesuvius, which should summarize the results of the research efforts promoted and sponsored since 1976 by the Italian Geodynamic Project. In particular this monograph should provide a description of the new 1 :25,000 scale geological map. The acquisition of new data was completed in 1985, but most of the field data were collected prior to 1983. Since then field work has continued and some further progress has been achieved, whose results have been published in intemational journals.
Although possibly partir out of date on the detailed description of some eruptions, the present monograph provides far the first lime a comprehensive picture of the geological, geophysical and petrochemical aspects of the wonderful volcano.



Professar of Volcanology at the University of Pisa
Director of the International Institute of Volcanology, CNR - Catania


ROBERTO SANTACROCE


November, 1987