University of Catania

Forest fires are one of the most dangerous events, causing serious land and environmental degradation. Indeed, besides the loss of a huge quantity of plant species, the effects of fires can go far beyond: desertification, increased risk of landslides, soil erosion, death of animals, etc. For these reasons, mathematical models able to predict fire spreading are needed in order to organize and optimize the extinguishing interventions during fire emergencies. This work presents a new system to simulate and predict the movement of the fire front based on free and open source Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies and the Rothermel surface fire spread model, with the adjustments made by Albini. We describe the mathematical models used, provide an overview of the GIS design and implementation, and present the results of some simulations at Etna volcano (Sicily, Italy), characterized by high geomorphological heterogeneity, and where the native flora and fauna may be preserved and perpetuated. The results consist of raster maps representing the progress times of the fire front starting from an ignition point and as a function of the topography and wind directions. The reliability of results is strictly affected by the correct positioning of the fire ignition point, by the accuracy of the topography that describes the morphology of the territory, and by the setting of the meteorological conditions at the moment of the ignition and propagation of the fire.

Volcanoes constitute dissipative systems with many degrees of freedom. Their eruptions are the result of complex processes that involve interacting chemical-physical systems. At present, due to the complexity of involved phenomena and to the lack of precise measurements, both analytical and numerical models are unable to simultaneously include the main processes involved in eruptions thus making forecasts of volcanic dynamics rather unreliable. On the other hand, accurate forecasts of some eruption parameters, such as the duration, could be a key factor in natural hazard estimation and mitigation. Analyzing a large database with most of all the known volcanic eruptions, we have determined that the duration of eruptions seems to be described by a universal distribution which characterizes eruption duration dynamics. In particular, this paper presents a plausible global power-law distribution of durations of volcanic eruptions that holds worldwide for different volcanic environments. We also introduce a new, simple and realistic pipe model that can follow the same found empirical distribution. Since the proposed model belongs to the family of the self-organized systems it may support the hypothesis that simple mechanisms can lead naturally to the emergent complexity in volcanic behaviour.

In our paper (Manuella et al. 2015), which arose from our 30-year-long research on the Hyblean xenoliths, we discussed an exhaustive dataset retrieved from the literature. We concluded that the unexposed basement of southeastern Sicily and neighboring areas consists of a remnant of the Paleo–Mesozoic Ionian–Tethyan oceanic lithosphere. Our viewpoint is opposite to the most popular theory that the Hyblean–Pelagian foreland domain is part of the Africa continental plate. We acknowledge some comments by Beccaluva et al. (2015) since they prompted us to explicit some background information given as implicit in our paper and hence to reaffirm with more emphasis fundamental aspects of our research, strongly confirming our previous conclusions.

The extensive study of a great number of deep-seated xenoliths from Tortonian tuff-breccia pipes in the Hyblean area (Sicily) revealed the following fundamental evidence: (1) typical continental crust rocks are completely absent in the entire xenolith suite; (2) mantle ultramafics are more abundant than gabbroids; (3) sheared oxide–gabbros, closely resembling those from oceanic fracture zones, are relatively common; (4) secondary mineral assemblages, compatible with alteration processes in serpentinite-hosted hydrothermal systems, occur both in peridotites and gabbros. Among the products of this hydrothermal activity, organic compounds, having abiotic origin via Fischer–Tropsch synthesis, occur in some hydrothermally altered gabbro and ultramafic xenoliths, as well as in hydrothermal clays. Moreover, the U–Pb dating of hydrothermal zircon grains, hosted in a xenolith of metasomatized tectonic breccia, indicated an Early–Middle Triassic age of the fossil hydrothermal system. Another line of evidence for the oceanic nature of the Hyblean–Pelagian basement is the complete absence of continental crust lithologies (granites, felsic metaigneous, and metasedimentary rocks) in outcrops and in boreholes, and the oceanic affinity of the Tertiary volcanic rocks from the Hyblean Plateau and the Sicily Channel (Pantelleria and Linosa Islands), which lack of any geochemical signature for continental crust contamination. A reappraisal of existing geophysical data pointed out that serpentinites form the dominant lithologies in the lithospheric basement of the Hyblean–Pelagian area down to a mean depth of 19 km, which represents the regional Moho considered as the serpentinization front, marking the transition from serpentinites to unaltered peridotites. On these grounds, we confirm that Hyblean xenoliths contain mineralogical, compositional, and textural evidence for tectonic, magmatic, and hydrothermal processes indicating the existence of fossil oceanic core complexes, in the geotectonic framework of the Paleo–Mesozoic, ultra-slow spreading, Ionian–Tethys Ocean forming the present Ionian–Hyblean–Pelagian domain.

In this paper we investigate ground motion properties in the western part of the Pernicana fault. This is the major fault of Mount Etna and drives the dynamic evolution of the area. In a previous work, Rigano et al. (2008) showed that a significant horizontal polarization characterizes ground motion in fault zones of Mount Etna, both during earthquakes and ambient vibrations. We have performed denser microtremor measurements in the NE rift segment and in intensely deformed zones of the Pernicana fault at Piano Pernicana. This study includes mapping of azimuth-dependent horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratios along and across the fault, frequency–wave number techniques applied to array data to investigate the nature of ambient vibrations, and polarization analysis through the conventional covariance matrix method. Our results indicate that microtremors are likely composed of volcanic tremor. Spectral ratios show strong directional resonances of horizontal components around 1 Hz when measurements enter the most damaged part of the fault zone. Their polarization directions show an abrupt change, by 20° to 40°, at close measurements between the northern and southern part of the fault zone. Recordings of local earthquakes at one site in the fault zone confirm the occurrence of polarization with the same angle found using volcanic tremor. We have also found that the directional effect is not time-dependent, at least at a seasonal scale. This observation and the similar behavior of volcanic tremors and earthquake-induced ground motions suggest that horizontal polarization is the effect of local fault properties. However, the 1-Hz resonant frequency cannot be reproduced using the 1-D vertically varying model inferred from the array data analysis, suggesting a role of lateral variations of the fault zone. Although the actual cause of polarization is unknown, a role of stress-induced anisotropy and microfracture orientation in the near-surface lavas of the Pernicana fault can be hypothesized consistently with the sharp rotation of the polarization angle within the damaged fault zone.

Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 11, EGU2009-7974, 2009 EGU General Assembly 2009 © Author(s) 2009 Earthquake Mechanisms of the Mediterranean Area (EMMA) version 3: an improved tool for characterizing the tectonic deformation styles in the Mediterranean. G. Vannucci (1), P. Imprescia (2), and P. Gasperini (3) (1) INGV-Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Via Donato Creti, 12, I-40128, Bologna (Italy), vannucci@bo.ingv.it, (2) Dipartimento Scienze Geologiche, Università di Catania, Corso Italia, 57, I-95129 Catania (Italy), p.imprescia@unict.it, (3) Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Bologna, Viale Berti-Pichat 8, I-40127 Bologna (Italy), paolo.gasperini@unibo.it EMMA (Earthquake Mechanisms of the Mediterranean Area) database contains available literature data with the goal of making them more usable and available. EMMA is continuously improving by the addition of further focal mechanisms found in literature. At the present time, EMMA pre-release 3 includes more than 12700 focal solutions, about twice of previous official release 2.2 (Vannucci and Gasperini, 2004). They cover a time window from 1905 to 2006. In the new release, many added solutions are in areas not much covered or completely uncovered in the previous one (e.g. Bulgaria, Germany, Anatolia). As in the previous versions (Vannucci and Gasperini, 2003 and 2004), we have uniformed the different formats and notations of the data available from different sources and we have tried to solve misprints, inaccuracies and inconsistencies that might make the data unusable for other investigations. By an automatic procedure based on several criteria, we have chosen the “most representative” (best) solution when more than one is available for the same earthquake. Thanks to this, we have obtained about 6000 best solutions. The end user can use the best solution obtained with our procedure or he can change criteria. The database allows to make selections and to export data files suitable to be handled by graphic software and user generated scripts. In the new version, still MS-ACCESS based, we have added geographic information to the display of the focal solution, as well as we have integrated the hypocentral and magnitude data found on the original papers with those reported by regional and local catalogs and bulletins. In order to make EMMA more accessible, a web version is currently in progress. Through an internet connection it will be possible data selection and export, without installation and configuration problems found in the past. EMMA was already used in the past and will be (hopefully) useful in the future to better characterize the tectonic deformation styles (e.g. by moment tensors sum within given areas or over regular geographical grids) particularly in areas of the European region where seismicity is moderate and only few CMT solutions are available. At the moment, we try to compute strain map for Mediterranean area, using EMMA data. In order to represent any recurrence in space, we identify small areas and apply to each one some spatial analyses. The work is still in progress, but preliminary results are satisfactory and in accord to previous studies.

The source mechanisms responsible for large historical tsunamis that have struck eastern Sicily and southern Calabria are a topic of robust debate. We have compiled a database of historical coeval descriptions of three large tsunamis: 11 January 1693, 6 February 1783, and 28 December 1908. By using accounts of run-up and inundation and employing an approach proposed by Okal and Synolakis in 2004, we can provide discriminants to define the nature of the near-field tsunami sources (fault dislocation or landslide). Historical reports for the 1908 event describe affected localities, maximum runups, and inundation areas. However, for the 1693 and 1783 tsunamis, reports are limited to inundation and occasional run-up estimates. We calculate run-up values for these events using available relations between inundation and run-up. We employed the model of Okal and Synolakis to the obtained profiles of tsunami run-up along the inundated shorelines. The 1908 run-up data distribution confirms that the tsunami is compatible with a seismic dislocation source, whereas the 1783 data supports contemporary observations and recent offshore investigations suggesting that the tsunami was produced by an earthquake-triggered submarine landslide. Analysis of the 1693 event data suggests that the tsunami was generated during a tectonic event and thus a seismogenic source should be found offshore.

The seismicity which affects Mt.Vesuvius is, at present, the only clear indicator of the volcano dynamics. In the last years, two periods of increased seismic activity occurred (August-October 1995 and March-May 1996). This seismicity was detected by the 10 analog stations of the Permanent Seismic Network as well as by up to 7 three-component temporary digital stations. A total number of about 600 events have been recorded, four of which showing magnitude >3.0. The maximum magnitude earthquake (M=3.4) was the strongest in the last fifty years and occurred on 25 April 1996. The use of three-component seismometers allowed us to obtain very reliable hypocentral locations. The focal volume of the two seismic crises does not exceed 5-6 km of depth below the crater area. Fault plane solutions of the most energetic events show focal planes oriented NW-SE and NE-SW, in agreement with the regional tectonic features, indicating that at present the seismicity of Mt.Vesuvius develops along pre-existing discontinuities. In addition, the occurrence of a fluiddriven source mechanism suggests a role played by the underground water on the seismic energy release. Shear wave splitting analyses confirmed the presence of an anisotropic volume related to a distribution of cracks andlor fractures parallely aligned to the main faults system of the volcano.