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A digital low power pulse compressed ionosonde was developed at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Rome, Italy. The aim of this Advanced Ionospheric Sounder, AIS-INGV, is to reduce the transmitted power and, consequently, weight, size, power consumption and hardware complexity. To compensate the power reduction the most advanced HF radar techniques such as the pulse compression and a phase coherent integration are used. The ionosonde is completely programmable and a PC supports the data acquisition, control, storage and on-line processing. The first prototype was installed at Gibilmanna Ionospheric Observatory (Sicily), an interesting location in the center of Mediterranean area. The new ionosonde will contribute to ionospheric database and real time knowledge of South European ionospheric conditions for space weather applications. In this work the first results (ionograms and autoscaled characteristics) are presented and briefly discussed.

A new digital ionosonde called AIS-INGV (Advanced Ionospheric Sounder) was designed both for research and for routine service of HF radio wave propagation forecast. Nearly the entire system was developed in the Laboratorio di Geofisica Ambientale at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Rome. It exploits advanced techniques for signal analysis, recent technological devices and PC resources. This paper describes design concepts and performance of the new ionosonde.

The Italian Ionospheric Antarctic Observatory of Terra Nova Bay (74.70S, 164.11E) was recently equipped with the AIS-INGV ionosonde developed at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Rome, (Italy). This paper aims to describe briefly which are the main characteristics of the instrument and show the good quality and reliability of the recorded ionograms.

The ionosonde is a system which exploits the radar technique: it applies electromagnetic waves with variable frequency in the HF band to measure the ionospheric layers electron density, height and other parameters. This paper is a technical report on the new digital ionosonde (AIS-INGV), which was designed both for research purposes and for the routine service of the HF radiowave propagation forecast. It has been developed almost completely within the Laboratorio di Geofisica Ambientale (LGA) at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). It exploits advanced techniques for the signal analysis, recent technological devices and PC resources. The report is divided into two parts; the first is a general description of the design development, the second is a more detailed description of the blocks and circuits actually built and tested, directed to a specialist reader.

www.earth-prints.org aims to satisfy the increasing demand of fast, up-to-date, easy-accessible, and free-of-charge sources of information in all branches of Geosciences. It allows earth scientists to deposit electronic documents into its collections and to index them by subjects and keywords. Earth-prints provides a time-stamp to all deposited materials to insure precedence rights to original ideas and scientific results. It deals with copyright issues through Creative Common standards that offer a wide variety of licenses. All deposited material is made immediately available to the public. Subscribers will be sent a daily newsletter according to the topics they have signed in. The archive has a three-level hierarchical structure. The top level includes Atmosphere, Cryosphere, Hydrosphere, Solid Earth, and General. It then branches into several disciplines within the other two levels. Different collections take in different kinds of material, such as pre-prints, oral presentations, extended abstracts, published papers, conference papers, books and book chapters, posters, and Web products and databases. Earth-Prints main language is English but it accepts documents in other languages also, giving visibility to data and studies at local scale that are indeed of general interests. An abstract in English is always required. We will present a virtual tour into the many features of Earth-prints to provide all its potential users with an easy acquaintance of the system and make them explore its capabilities. Although the archive is based on latest information technology it requires no specific knowledge to be used because it manages all procedures for access, navigation, upload of documents and information retrieval through a user-friendly interface. What is the limit of open archive development? We think that the one and only limit of open archives is the eagerness of its users to share information and knowledge.

We set up a computational tool to numerically model static and quasi-static deformation generated by faulting sources embedded in plane or spherical domains. We use a Finite Element (FE) approach to automatically implement arbitrary faulting sources and calculate displacement and stress fields induced by slip on the fault. The package makes use of the capabilities of CalculiX, a non commercial FE software designed to solve field problems (see for details), and is freely distributed by request.

The historical sources of large and moderate earthquakes, earthquake catalogues and monographs exist in many depositories in Syria and European centers. They have been studied, and the detailed review and analysis resulted in a catalogue with 181 historical earthquakes from 1365 B.C. to 1900 A.D. Numerous original documents in Arabic, Latin, Byzantine and Assyrian allowed us to identify seismic events not mentioned in previous works. In particular, detailed descriptions of damage in Arabic sources provided quantitative information necessary to re-evaluate past seismic events. These large earthquakes (I0>VIII) caused considerable damage in cities, towns and villages located along the northern section of the Dead Sea fault system. Fewer large events also occurred along the Palmyra, Ar-Rassafeh and the Euphrates faults in Eastern Syria. Descriptions in original sources document foreshocks, aftershocks, fault ruptures, liquefaction, landslides, tsunamis, fires and other damages. We present here an updated historical catalogue of 181 historical earthquakes distributed in 4 categories regarding the originality and other considerations, we also present a table of the parametric catalogue of 36 historical earthquakes (table I) and a table of the complete list of all historical earthquakes (181 events) with the affected locality names and parameters of information quality and completeness (table II) using methods already applied in other regions (Italy, England, Iran, Russia) with a completeness test using EMS-92. This test suggests that the catalogue is relatively complete for magnitudes >6.5. This catalogue may contribute to a comprehensive and unified parametric earthquake catalogue and to a realistic assessment of seismic hazards in Syria and surrounding regions.

This book contains the proceedings of the 1st WSEAS International Conference on Environmental and Geological Science and Engineering (EG'08) which was held in Malta, September 11-13, 2008. This conference aims to disseminate the latest research and applications in Renewable Energy, Mineral Resources, Natural Hazards and Risks, Environmental Impact Assessment, Urban and Regional Planning Issues, Remote Sensing and GIS, and other relevant topics and applications. The friendliness and openness of the WSEAS conferences, adds to their ability to grow by constantly attracting young researchers. The WSEAS Conferences attract a large number of well-established and leading researchers in various areas of Science and Engineering as you can see from http://www.wseas.org/reports. Your feedback encourages the society to go ahead as you can see in http://www.worldses.org/feedback.htm The contents of this Book are also published in the CD-ROM Proceedings of the Conference. Both will be sent to the WSEAS collaborating indices after the conference: www.worldses.org/indexes In addition, papers of this book are permanently available to all the scientific community via the WSEAS E-Library. Expanded and enhanced versions of papers published in this conference proceedings are also going to be considered for possible publication in one of the WSEAS journals that participate in the major International Scientific Indices (Elsevier, Scopus, EI, ACM, Compendex, INSPEC, CSA .... see: www.worldses.org/indexes) these papers must be of high-quality (break-through work) and a new round of a very strict review will follow. (No additional fee will be required for the publication of the extended version in a journal). WSEAS has also collaboration with several other international publishers and all these excellent papers of this volume could be further improved, could be extended and could be enhanced for possible additional evaluation in one of the editions of these international publishers. Finally, we cordially thank all the people of WSEAS for their efforts to maintain the high scientific level of conferences, proceedings and journals.

Traffic light systems (TLS) are commonly used for monitoring seismicity induced by subsurface operations, including geothermal energy, wastewater injection, and increasingly, enhanced oil recovery as well as carbon capture and storage (CCS). TLS frameworks typically define thresholds for seismic parameterssuch as magnitude or ground motionand specify response actions when thresholds are exceeded. However, current TLS implementations often rely on empirical single-parameter rules and lack mechanisms to account for uncertainties in monitoring data, seismic location, or network coverage. These limitations may lead to overly conservative or delayed responses, particularly in data-sparse environments typical of many CCS sites. This paper reviews established seismic TLS frameworks and assesses their suitability for application to CCS monitoring. Differences in operational contextsuch as fluid compressibility, offshore placement, and lower seismicity ratesmean that TLS elements developed for geothermal or wastewater injection cannot be transferred to CCS without modification. We highlight the importance of considering multi-parameter decision logic, pre-operational baselines, and real-time processing constraints. We further note that hybrid monitoring networks, combining borehole and surface sensors, as well as physics-based simulations of ground motion, may offer promising avenues to improve detectability, location precision, and uncertainty handling in CCS contexts. Finally, we underline the importance of communication design and public trust in TLS effectiveness, especially in light of surveys showing public concern around CCS-related seismicity. We conclude with specific recommendations for improving TLS frameworks to better support risk-informed, transparent monitoring of CCS operations.

An unknown later seismic phase has been found on waveforms of intermediate-depth and deep earthquakes of the southern Tyrrhenian subduction system. The later phase, called the x-phase, is a compressional wave, which leaves the source travelling downwards and propagating in the deepest edge of the Ionian lithosphere. It is, then, transmitted to the surface and observed at stations towards north, hundreds of kilometres away, appearing few seconds after the direct P wave. The observation of the x-phase and its peculiar seismological features have implications on the petrology of the Ionian slab and on water transport in the upper mantle. An additional aspect, to be further explored, is the possible presence of a similar later arrival after the S waves, which may add more information about the origin of the waves. This paper introduces previous findings and presents new analyses on S waves, completing earlier results and interpretations

The Gargano Promontory (hereafter GP) has attracted the attention of seismologists in recent years for its peculiarities regarding the high rate of low-magnitude seismicity and focal depths in the lower crust. These peculiarities have been highlighted thanks to the new data provided by the OTRIONS seismic network (hereafter OT), installed in 2013 in the GP area, consisting of 15 short-period seismometers, thanks to a fruitful collaboration between UniBa (University of Bari Aldo Moro) and INGV (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia). The first available seismic catalog referred to the first 7 years of the network operation (2013–2018) and suffered from some technological problems of the acquisition system. Thanks to improvements in the data transmission system, these problems were overcome in 2019 and now the OT network data are available in real time. In order to include the most recent seismicity and to cover the temporal gaps existing in the previous catalog, we thoroughly reviewed the 24 h seismic recordings, collected over the decade after the installation, by employing an automatic detect and picking software (CASP, Complete Automatic Seismic Processor). More than 7100 seismic events were initially identified. Through careful manual review, approximately 60 % were confirmed as local earthquakes, and the others were recognized as quarry blasts or false/poorly-located events. Manual review significantly improved the quality of P- and S-phase picking, and consequently led to more accurate earthquake locations, using both linearized and nonlinear algorithms. The manual review resulted in two catalogs, both released on Mendeley Data (Ferreri et al., 2026) (https://doi.org/10.17632/nhfvx7ysxw.6). This study highlights the value of automatic analysis for compiling a seismic catalog, suggesting that the manual review is still necessary. The quality of the catalogs was assessed in detail using statistical parameters and a new formula for the location quality. The completeness magnitude of the new catalogs is as low as 0.82. The noise affecting the network was also evaluated. This study confirms the importance of the OT local network for seismic hazard analysis and provides a useful dataset for seismotectonic and geophysical studies in a long under-monitored region.