The location of Italian Peninsula at the convergence between the African and Eurasian plates, makes it a Country with high level of seismic hazard. The relationship between the damage and the energy released by earthquakes is much stronger in Italy than in other Countries with high seismicity, such as California or Japan. This is mainly because our Country is characterized by the presence of historical centers with buildings that often are not adequate to support seismic forces. Our historical ...

A giant depression (0.5 km2) associated with hydrothermal activity has been recently discovered, on the seafloor surrounding Zannone Island (western Pontine Archipelago, Tyrrhenian Sea) at water depth ranging between 110 and 130 m, by CNR-IGAG researchers. This depression has been studied through very high resolution bathymetric data in the framework of the MaGIC project (http://www.magicproject.it/). Successively, during the research cruise "BOLLE 2014" aboard of the Urania R/V the site has ...

Marble exploitation in the Apuane Alps gives rise to rock wall faces and underground voids of uncommon size and shape. The trend towards gigantism in quarry operations (the height of the faces increases up to 150m, the length of underground voids to 80-120m, their height to 30-50m and their span to 20-40m) is sustained by the higher outputs required and favored by the growing mechanization of the stopes. It is known however that ornamental stones exploitation, both surface and underground, is ...

On December 30th 2002 the inhabited coastal areas of Stromboli Island were hit by a series of tsunami waves up to 10 metre high. Tsunami waves were the effect of at least two destructive landslides which involved the submarine and subaerial Sciara del Fuoco slope, respectively. Sciara del Fuoco is the NW flank of the Stromboli volcano, where the products of the volcanic activity accumulate. At present the NW flank looks like a regular slope above and below the sea level. Actually it is the ...

THE AGRICULTURAL REUSE OF RECLAIMED WASTE-WATERS SLUDGES The wide-spread technologies currently applied to the treatment of municipal waste waters involve high energetic consumptions and produce a huge quantity of sludges containing heavy metals, organic compounds, pathogenous agents as well as appreciable amount of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. The EU directives, namely EC 91/271/EEC, do not permit the spreading of waste waters sludges on the ground, whereas the ...

Geological-geomorphological framework and site effects at San Giuliano di Puglia (CB) and othter localities struck by the seismic sequence of October-November 2002. Since Oct. 31 2002 a seismic sequence has affected a sector of the Molise Apennines between the Fortore and Biferno river valleys. Although the magnitude of the two main events (Ml 5.4 and 5.3) is lower than that of the large historical earthquakes of the Apennines, some villages experienced significant damage and casualties ...