Sicily: a geological laboratory

“Geologists at risk of extinction”: this is the opening sentence of an article of March 29, 2016 of “Il Sole 24ORE”, (1) that fits well the difficult situation that this professional category is experiencing in recent years. It has been witnessed, in fact, a strong reduction in the educational offer in both the school and university system, with the number of Departments in Earth Sciences dropped from 29 to 8, accompanied by a progressive reduction in enrollment and graduates, from 1140 in 2002 to 586 in 2008 (2). Numbers that make you think, especially if contextualized to the Italian territory, widely characterized by the hydrogeological, seismic and volcanological risk, in whose preventi…