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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.

Purpose-This study looks at the growing trend of higher temperatures in cities during the summer months. This rise in temperature leads to various environmental and health issues. This research aims to identify the major risks posed by extreme heat, especially for vulnerable communities. It also evaluates how well the current measures in different cities around the world address this increasing problem.

In the present era, environmental challenges are becoming increasingly prominent, necessitating innovative solutions that facilitate air quality monitoring and mitigation strategies aimed at safeguarding human health, the climate, and ecosystems. This study demonstrates how combining low-cost and high-tech stations (through integrated fixed and mobile monitoring) offers an effective and complementary approach. The strategy was applied in diverse environments (volcanic-hydrothermal areas, a wetland, and a CO2 production plant), providing high spatial and temporal resolution data. Fixed low-cost stations, calibrated using machine-learning techniques, enabled continuous monitoring of key pollutants (CO2, CH4, PM2.5, PM10), depicting temporal variability linked to atmospheric dynamics, meteorological conditions, and emission strength. Their affordability allowed denser monitoring networks, enhancing spatial resolution and identifying critical areas that require long-term observation. This was especially effective in the wetland, where eutrophic zones emitting higher CH4 levels were clearly identified. Mobile high-tech monitoring complemented fixed data by extending spatial coverage, with repeated transects allowing partial temporal tracking. An integrated analysis of pollutant concentrations, wind patterns, and isotopic ratios (δ13C of CO2 and CH4) enabled source apportionment, distinguishing between geogenic-hydrothermal and anthropogenic emissions, particularly in volcanic and industrial contexts. Despite its strengths, some limitations persist in the combination of the two approaches: (i) the drift over time and aging of low-cost sensors were not addressed, despite the necessity of their evaluation to ensure their proper use over longer monitoring periods; (ii) mobile monitoring lacks continuous temporal data and measurements are not simultaneous, limiting its effectiveness for tracking long-term trends and comparing pollutant levels across different areas.

After an earthquake, it is crucial to rapidly and accurately estimate macroseismic intensity to guide rescue operations and assess potential damage. The Mercalli-Cancani-Sieberg intensity scale is used to qualitatively assess the ground shaking based on observed effects. This study develops a Machine Learning framework, leveraging the Random Forest algorithm, to estimate macroseismic intensity using early available seismic data. Data from different sources are used for model training: seismic data from the Italian instrumental monitoring networks of Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia and Protezione Civile, as well as macroseismic intensity data from both the online macroseismic questionnaire and the on-site surveys by field experts. In order to explain the predictive mechanism of the Random Forest algorithm, this study makes use of surrogate decision trees, providing an interpretative key for the informed decision-making process during seismic events. These models provide insights into the relationships between covariates and predicted intensities, enabling the discussion of model complexity, predictive capability, and explainability. Furthermore, the uncertainty associated with the predictions of the surrogate trees is assessed. When compared with other models for estimating intensity based on ground motion peaks or source parameters, the Random Forest model achieved better predictive performance.

We evaluated the geothermal resources of Vulcano Island considering the available geological, geochemical, and geophysical information in the framework of the conceptual model of La Fossa magmatic-geothermal system. Having ascertained that the shallow groundwaters of the Vulcano Porto plain are heated by geothermal steam and gases and are not directly impacted by magmatic fluids, we have adopted the P CO2 and temperature distribution in these shallow groundwaters to delimit the areal extension of the underlying geothermal aquifer, which is 0.777 km 2 and 0.752 km 2 based on the P CO2 and temperature maps respectively, in agreement with the area from MT data, 0.7 km 2. The revised volume method was used considering the specific productivity of liquiddominated geothermal systems, 40 t ⋅ h − 1 ⋅ km − 3 , and assuming that the geothermal aquifer has a thickness of 2.8 km and a temperature of 200-275 • C. The hourly production rate of geothermal fluids resulted to be in the range 84.2-87.0 t ⋅ h − 1 , while the extractable thermal and electrical powers turned out to be 25 ± 6(1σ) MWt and 8.3 ± 2.0 MWe, respectively. Drilling of one or two production wells and one reinjection well (depth in the order of 1.5-2.0 km) could be therefore a suitable technical solution.