Search results for "GEOLOGY"
showing 10 items of 6012 documents
Geophysical study of an landslide in northern Sicily
2002
The San Fratello area in the Nebrodi Mountains (northern Sicily) is a region of high instability. It has suffered many devastating occurrences, which have hit and destroyed the village of San Fratello. At present the area is still subject to a high landslide risk. A series of geophysical surveys have been carried out with the aim of determining the thickness and dimensions of the landslide body as well as some tectonic features, in order to gain insight into the evolution of the landslide. The following geophysical techniques have been used: borehole seismic tomography, i.e. down-hole tomographic seismic soundings (DH TSS), time-domain electromagnetic (TDEM) soundings and georadar profiling…
Recognition of earthquake-induced damage in the Abakainon necropolis (NE Sicily): results from geo-morphological, geophysical and numerical analyses
2017
Seismotectonic activity and slope instability are a permanent threat in the archaeological site of Abakainon and in the nearby village of Tripi in NE Sicily. In recent times, signs of an ancient earthquake have been identified in the necropolis of Abakainon which dating was ascertained to the first century AD earthquake. The site is located on a slope of Peloritani Mts. along the Tindari Fault Line and contains evidence for earthquake-induced landslide, including fallen columns and blocks, horizontal shift and counter slope tilting of the tomb basements. In this paper, we used an integrated geomorphological and geophysical analysis to constrain the landslide. The research was directed to th…
Recurrence time distribution and temporal clustering properties of a cellular automaton modelling landslide events
2018
Abstract. Reasonable prediction of landslide occurrences in a given area requires the choice of an appropriate probability distribution of recurrence time intervals. Although landslides are widespread and frequent in many parts of the world, complete databases of landslide occurrences over large periods are missing and often such natural disasters are treated as processes uncorrelated in time and, therefore, Poisson distributed. In this paper, we examine the recurrence time statistics of landslide events simulated by a cellular automaton model that reproduces well the actual frequency-size statistics of landslide catalogues. The complex time series are analysed by varying both the threshold…
Integration of constrained electrical and seismic tomographies to study the landslide affecting the cathedral of Agrigento
2014
The Cathedral of Saint Gerland, located on the top of the hill of Agrigento, is an important historical church, which dates back to the Arab–Norman period (XI century). Unfortunately throughout its history the Cathedral and the adjacent famous Archaeological Park of the 'Valley of the Temples' have been affected by landslides. In this area the interleaving of calcarenites, silt, sand and clay is complicated by the presence of dislocated rock blocks and cavities and by a system of fractures partly filled with clay or water. Integrated geophysical surveys were carried out on the north side of the hill, on which the Cathedral of Agrigento is founded, to define lithological structures involved …
Geomorphological and geophysical investigations to study the landslide affecting the archaeological site of abakainon
2016
In recent years, a detailed archeoseismological investigation has been carried out in the necropolis of Abakainon in order to identify traces of an ancient earthquake. Although the identification of seismic damage was undoubtedly attributed to the 1st century AD earthquake, it was hypothesised that the level of damaging observed in the necropolis, as well as the counter slope tilting of the tomb basements may have also caused by a seismo-induced landslide, which produced locally an amplification of the seismic shaking. In order to identify the landslide, on which the Greek site lies, detailed geomorphological and geophysical surveys have been carried out. The research was directed to the ac…
Hydro-mechanical analysis of volcanic ash slopes during rainfall
2016
Rainfall-induced landslides in volcanic ashes represent a major natural hazard in many regions around the world. Owing to their loose structure, volcanic ash slopes are prone to rainfall-induced landslides. The paper presents a continuum modelling approach for the analysis of wetting-induced instability phenomena at the onset of failure in loose volcanic ash slopes. A numerical simulation of a landslide-prone volcanic slope in Costa Rica is carried out with a two-dimensional hydro-mechanical finite-element slope model. A constitutive model based on the effective stress concept extended to partially saturated conditions is used to reproduce the volcanic ash hydro-mechanical behaviour. The m…
Modelling landslides in unsaturated slopes subjected to rainfall infiltration using material point method
2016
This paper presents a dynamic fully coupled formulation for saturated and unsaturated soils that undergo large deformations based on material point method. Governing equations are applied to porous material while considering it as a continuum in which the pores of the solid skeleton are filled with water and air. The accuracy of the developed method is tested with available experimental and numerical results. The developed method has been applied to investigate the failure and post-failure behaviour of rapid landslides in unsaturated slopes subjected to rainfall infiltration using two different bedrock geometries that lie below the top soil. The models show different failure and post-failur…
Effects of the foot evolution on the behaviour of slow-moving landslides
2011
The paper presents a time-dependent 2D numerical model which has been developed with the purpose of highlighting the effects of the slope foot evolution on the behaviour of slow-moving landslides. The model allows to quantitatively analyse how foot mass variations can influence the stability and the movement rates of the landslide. The landslide body is modelled as composed of two rigid blocks sliding on two different planes and interacting through a common boundary, which position is assumed fixed during the analysis. A finite difference approach is used to discretize the time. For each time increment, changes in model parameters are allowed, including variations in shearing resistances, g…
Landslides and gully slope erosion on the banks of the Gauja River between the towns of Sigulda and Līgatne
2013
This study examines contemporary and past slope erosion processes in the Gauja River valley and adjoining area between the towns of Sigulda and Līgatne. In the field survey landslides and gullies were mapped. Spatial landslide and gully data were correlated with the landslide- and gully-related features (local relief, slope lithology, slope form, slope angle and density of gullies). A novel approach was applied to establish the relationships between slope processes and factors influencing them. This approach uses correlation between raster values of landslide-related factors in specific slope sections and the number of slope processes in these sections to determine the areas prone to slope …
The Chronology of Archaeological Assemblages Based on Automatic Bayesian Procedure: Eastern Iberia as Study Case
2021
The purpose of this work is to show an automatic Bayesian procedure to obtain accurate chronological information of archaeological assemblages characterized by palimpsest or neither radiocarbon dates and whose temporal information comes only from bifacial flint arrowheads.In this work, a classification based on the Dirichlet-multinomial inferential process and its posterior predictive probability distribution are applied. Its purpose is to predict the chronological period of archaeological assemblages (levels or sites) based on the predictive probability distribution of each bifacial flint arrowhead types defined in the Eastern Iberia during the 4th and 3rd millennium cal BC. The results of…