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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.

We investigated two semi-submerged marine caves within the Tremiti Islands Marine Protected Area (South Italy, Adriatic Sea), integrating geomorphological mapping, video-transects, qualitative sampling, and an assessment of recreational boating. High-resolution 3D surveys were used to characterize cave morphology. Benthic assemblages were analysed from SCUBA video-transects performed at two depths (3 and 7 m) in May and November 2021 (before and after the tourist season, respectively), and species inventories were refined through qualitative sampling. A total of 118 taxa were recorded. Benthic cover was consistently high (98-99%) across caves, depths, sectors, and periods. Assemblages were dominated by encrusting sciaphilic Rhodophyta and Porifera, and showed clear spatial gradients both horizontally and vertically. Recreational boating pressure was high, with >5000 boat transits and approximately 77,000 passengers recorded in summer 2021. Despite this intensity, no detectable short-term changes in benthic composition were detected at the community level. Large excursion boatsquick visits, regulated, and professionally operatedhad minimal impact, whereas small, rented motorboats, with longer and less controlled visits, represent a potential risk. These findings provide the first integrated ecological and geomorphological baseline for Tremiti semi-submerged caves and support targeted management of recreational boating within MPAs.

Cliff-top boulder deposits represent one of the most extreme and debated geomorphological expressions of highenergy coastal processes, as their emplacement requires sustained overtopping of cliffs during coastal flooding. Occurring several metres above mean sea level and well beyond the reach of ordinary wave run-up, cliff-top boulder deposits are particularly sensitive indicators of extreme wave events. In this study, we investigate clifftop boulder deposits atop a 10-m-high cliff in southeastern Sicily by integrating geomorphological observations with hydrodynamic modelling for both present and Last Interglacial forcing conditions. Hydrodynamic modelling was used to simulate extreme wave events that can cause coastal flooding and wave flow under tropical-like cyclone and tsunami scenarios. To evaluate the geomorphological effects of these extreme wave events, we modelled and compared the current scenarios under the present-day sea level, and Last Interglacial scenarios, which in contrast, incorporate elevated relative sea level and intensified hurricane and tsunami forcings to evaluate wave flow needed for cliff-top deposit emplacement. The results reflect a scenario with a Last Interglacial post-highstand regressive phase, highlighting the role of sea-level-controlled boundary conditions in enabling extreme coastal flooding and inland boulder transport. Our results indicate that Mediterranean cliff-top boulder deposits reflect the effectiveness of extreme waves acting under specific boundary conditions, rather than the absolute magnitude of the waves themselves, with relative sea level exerting a first-order control on coastal impact.

Changes at the surface of a volcanic edifice, such as snow or hydrological loading, ice cap melting, and flank destabilization, can cause significant surface deformation. Understanding the contribution of surface processes to ground deformation is therefore important for monitoring the state of the underlying volcanic system. The Katla Volcano in Iceland lies under Mýrdalsjökull, the fourth largest glacier in Iceland, and undergoes the largest seasonal deformation of all Icelandic volcanoes: up to 4 cm horizontally and 3 cm vertically at the Austmannsbunga (AUST) Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) station. The last confirmed eruption of Katla occurred in 1918. Since then, episodes of elevated seismicity and jökulhlaups (sudden glacial outburst floods) have been recorded at the volcano, the most noticeable in 1955, 1999, 2011, and 2024. During the 2024 jökulhlaup, horizontal displacement of up to 7 cm was recorded at AUST. In this work, elastic three-dimensional finite element method models were implemented to quantify surface deformation from seasonal load changes. The models include realistic bedrock topography and ice unloading based on recent data collected at Mýrdalsjökull. A deformation model considering only seasonal snow unloading can reproduce within uncertainty the observed GNSS vertical surface displacements. It can also explain the horizontal signals at GNSS stations located outside the glacier, although not at GNSS stations located on nunataks inside Mýrdalsjökull. An additional deformation source must be considered to explain the residual cm-scale horizontal displacement at these stations. We model the residual signal using a thermo-poro-elastic cylindrical source. The best-fit source is a cylinder located at the surface that produces cm-scale horizontal deformation with limited vertical deformation. The shallow source depth derived from the inversion and the surface deformation recorded at AUST during the jökulhlaup series in 2024 and 2025 suggests that seasonal deformation is not strictly related to magmatic activity. We infer that changes within the hydrologic system of the glacier are responsible for most of the horizontal deformation at Katla.

With increasing geopolitical risks, environmental pressures, and regulatory demands, the sustainable sourcing of raw materials has become a global priority for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and SDG 13 (Climate Action). This study presents a data-driven framework for assessing the substitution of imported primary raw materials with secondary resources derived from mining waste, using the Italian ceramic industry as a testbed. Through a combined approach integrating material characterization, life cycle assessment, and supply chain analytics, we evaluate the technical, environmental, and resilience performance of substituting Turkish albite with feldspathic waste from Calabrian quarries. Results show that hybrid logistics configurations (truck and ship) for domestic by-products can outperform imported materials in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, supply chain resilience, and strategic autonomy while supporting circular economy principles. The framework provides replicable analytical tools to support evidence-based sourcing decisions in resource-intensive sectors, helping companies and policymakers align operational practices with sustainability goals. Implications for circular value creation, climate mitigation, and industrial policy are discussed.