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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.

The methodological framework developed for the Etna region after the 2018 earthquake provides an operational model for the assessment, repair, and reconstruction of retaining walls in seismic areas characterized by complex geological conditions and landscapes of high socio-cultural value. The approach integrates geological and geotechnical investigations with regulatory requirements and principles for the protection of architectural, cultural, and environmental heritage, offering public administrations and designers a replicable methodology for safe, sustainable, and landscape-compatible reconstruction. The framework adopts performance-based and deformation-compatible design criteria, integrating geostructural and geophysical data with fault-displacement considerations to mitigate the effects of permanent ground deformation, while ensuring full compliance with safety standards and preservation criteria.This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.

The 13 May 2008 dike intrusion on the northern flank of Mt. Etna provides a rare case in which surface structural evidence can be directly compared with real-time geophysical observations. In this study, we integrate structural field data, high-precision earthquake relocations, focal mechanism analysis, and energy-balance considerations to reconstruct the propagation and arrest of the dike. The mapped dry fracture field offers robust geometric validation on the depth of the dike tip (200-600 m), in agreement with deformation modeling and seismic analysis. The evolution of focal mechanisms shows a transition from normal/strike-slip faulting to reverse faulting in the final stage, indicating the onset of a localized compressional regime consistent with dike arrest. The cumulative seismic moment closely matches the energy value expected to be released by the modeled dike, suggesting that the available elastic strain energy was largely exhausted. The convergence of structural, seismic, and energybalance evidence makes the 2008 intrusion a benchmark case for rapid, real-time assessment of dike arrest and volcanic hazard mitigation.

historical earthquakes are essential for long-term seismicity and seismic-hazard assessment, but their location and magnitude are often poorly constrained by sparse and uneven intensity data. We apply the Bakun and Wentworth grid-search method to selected Intensity Data Points (IDPs) from DBMI15 for four earthquakes in northeastern Italy, using Mw-calibrated Italian attenuation models. We estimate intensity centres, intensity-based Mw values, and empirical 67% and 95% confidence contours. The resulting maps make the spatial resolution of each macroseismic field explicit and provide a quantitative layer for comparison with CPTI15/Boxer solutions and DISS seismogenic sources. 2. Methodology: From Historical Sources to Empirical Confidence Contours Input: Selected IDPs from DBMI15 (conventional MCS intensity values, I ≥ III). Algorithm: Bakun & Wentworth (1997) grid-search method. Attenuation Models: Italian macroseismic intensity attenuation models calibrated in Mw by Gomez-Capera et al. (2024). Log-Lin_10 is used as the reference model; CRV9 provides an independent sensitivity check. Output: Intensity centre, adopted as the macroseismic epicentre; intensity-based Mw; Mw intervals; and empirical 67% and 95% confidence contours derived from the RMS surface. The contours express the spatial resolution of the IDP field; they are not posterior probability maps or rupture boundaries. Study area in northeastern Italy, showing historical earthquakes with Mw > 5.5 from CPTI15 and seismogenic sources defined on Galadini et al. (2005) and Poli et al. (2008), and subsequently incorporated into the DISS database (DISS Working Group, 2025). Epicentres are coloured by magnitude class and labelled by year; blue boxes show DISS individual and composite sources. The map provides the regional seismotectonic context for the four earthquakes analysed in this study:

Physico-chemical variations in groundwater are potential indicators of crustal stress linked to seismic activity. In Italy, non-volcanic regions still lack standardised, continuous monitoring. The MEET (Monitoring Earth's Evolution and Tectonics) project, funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, aims to fill this gap by installing 25 high-frequency groundwater monitoring stations. These automatically record temperature, electrical conductivity, water level, and, at selected sites, dissolved CO₂ pressure, supported by a FAIR-compliant data infrastructure. Ten stations are already active in Valle d'Aosta, Liguria, Abruzzo, Marche, and Calabria. This work illustrates the network's technical features, siteselection criteria, and first results from monitored springs and wells, highlighting the importance of the integration of geochemical, geological, and seismotectonic data. Completion by 2026 will advance knowledge of crustal fluid dynamics and research on the relation between physico-chemical groundwaters variations and earthquake events in Italy.