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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.

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.

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.

The paleomagnetism of Miocene calc-alkaline volcanics and sediments from Sardinia has firmly showed that the Corsica-Sardinia microplate rotated 50°–60° counterclockwise (CCW) with respect to Europe between 21 and 15 Ma, during its drift from the Provencal margin. However, Permian to Eocene rocks from central-south Sardinia revealed higher (up to 120°) CCW rotation values that implied contrasting kinematic models for pre-Miocene times. Late Permian block rotations, a connection with the Brianconnais and closure of the Valais Ocean, and Oligocene assembly of two Sardinian sub-microplates of Iberian and European affinity were advocated. In such frame, a total post-Permian 60° CCW rotation of N Sardinia-S Corsica was considered a first-order constraint, given the solid database from Permian dykes and volcanics gathered there. Here we report on the paleomagnetism of 38 sites from Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous sediments (and one ignimbrite) from Nurra (NW Sardinia). All sites are located on the same crustal sub-block, thus are pivotal to constrain rotation timing. We find that Lower Triassic to Upper Cretaceous sediments consistently show a ∼90° CCW rotation, whereas Permian data reveal a ∼30° clockwise (CW) rotation occurring in the 290–250 Ma time window. We conclude that the Oligo-Miocene CCW rotation of a Sardinia-S Corsica area must be increased to a 90° value, of which 30° occurred before 21–15 Ma microplate drift. The Permian 30° CW rotation occurred 90–50 Myr earlier than Central Atlantic rifting episodes, eventually leading to Pangea breakup. Thus, it unquestionably testifies an intra-Pangean microplate mobility significantly pre-dating its fragmentation.

The Geological Survey of Italy (currently a De- partment of the National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, ISPRA) is the official ge- ological mapping office of Italy. The geological map- ping section of the Survey, besides its main task of maps production, carries out research activities and participates in international projects. The marine geology team of the mapping sec- tion is Partner of the Consortium, originated in the frame of the Marine Geology Expert Group of Eu- roGeoSurveys (Association of European Geological Surveys), which carries out the Geology Lot of the European Marine Observation and Data network (EMODnet). EMODnet Geology aims at creating Europe wide digital maps of marine areas and at providing free access to the underlying databases. Seabed studies have been considerably boost- ed in the last thirty years, thanks to technological innovation which allowed to increase and update the knowledge of submerged areas, providing addi- tional information on seafloor features as well as on buried geological structures. The comprehensive national database real- ized within the Italian Geological Mapping Project (CARG) allowed the Geological Survey of Italy, to- gether with its long experience in cartographic rep- resentation, to contribute succesfully to the diverse products of EMODnet Geology. However, other Italian public research institutions and universities have been involved in the activities of the Project in order to provide the most comprehensive and up- dated products, particularly concerning geological events (earthquakes, submarine landslides, volcan- ic centers, tsunamis, fluid emissions and tectonics), which constitute the object of the work package of EMODnet Geology coordinated by the Geological Survey of Italy. The data gathered for EMODnet Geology, al- lowed the Geological Survey of Italy, in collaboration with CNR-ISMAR, INGV, OGS and the universities of Genova, Palermo, RomaTRE and Trieste, to real- ize, as one of its publications, the present “Structur- al map of seas surrounding Italy” which represents a case study of EMODnet applications. It aims to be an update, relative to submerged areas, of the Structural Model of Italy, published at the beginning of the 90s, and provides information concerning the structural setting of seas surrounding Italy.

Strapdown gravity systems are increasingly employed in airborne geophysical exploration and geodetic studies due to advantages such as ease of installation, wide dynamic range, and adaptability to various platforms, including airplanes, helicopters, and large drones. This study presents results from an airborne gravity survey conducted over the northeastern sector of Sardinia (Italy), using a high-resolution strapdown gravity ensuring an accuracy of approximately 1 mGal. Data were collected at an average altitude of 1800 m with a spatial resolution of 3.0 km. The survey focused on the Sos Enattos area near Lula (Nuoro province), a candidate site for the Einstein Telescope (ET), a third-generation gravitational wave observatory. The ideal site is required to be geologically and seismically stable with a well-characterized subsurface. To support this, we performed a new gravity survey to complement existing geological and seismic data aimed at characterizing the mid-to-shallow crustal structure of Sos Enattos. Results show that the strapdown system effectively detects gravity anomalies linked to crustal sources down to ~3.5 km, with particular emphasis within the 1–2 km depth range. Airborne gravity data reveal higher frequency anomalies than those resolved by the EGM2008 global gravity model and show good agreement with local terrestrial gravity data. Forward modeling of the gravity field suggests a crust dominated by alternating high-density metamorphic rocks and granitoid intrusions of the Variscan basement. These findings enhance the geophysical understanding of Sos Enattos and support its candidacy for the ET site.

The Macroseismic Photographic Database (DFM) is a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) dataset developed and maintained by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). It provides a structured archive of photographic evidence documenting the effects of moderate to strong earthquakes in Italy since the 1980s. The data collection is primarily carried out by the INGV's QUEST (QUick Earthquake Survey Team) during post-event macroseismic field campaigns. The database was initially conceived to preserve at-risk analogue photographic material but has evolved into a comprehensive digital resource where each image is catalogued with detailed metadata. The classification of building typologies and damage grades is standardised according to the principles of the European Macroseismic Scale 1998 (EMS-98). The DFM is designed for full interoperability within the INGV data ecosystem, linking each photograph to earthquakes, localities, and macroseismic observations contained in primary databases such as the Italian Seismological Instrumental and Parametric Database (ISIDe), the Parametric Catalogue of Italian Earthquakes (CPTI15), and the Italian Macroseismic Database (DBMI15). This paper describes the database structure, the data collection protocol, the metadata schema, and the technical solutions adopted to ensure data quality and accessibility. The DFM represents a valuable resource for scientific research in engineering seismology, historical seismology, and for training operators involved in damage assessment, providing crucial ground-truth data for seismic hazard studies and civil protection purposes. The dataset is publicly accessible at https://doi.org/10.13127/dfm (QUEST, 2023).