Shallow submarine gas vents in Levante Bay, Vulcano Island (Italy), emit around 3.6t CO2 per day providing a natural laboratory for the study of biogeochemical processes related to seabed CO2 leaks and ocean acidification. The main physico-chemical parameters (T, pH and Eh) were measured at more than 70 stations with 40 seawater samples were collected for chemical analyses. The main gas vent area had high concentrations of dissolved hydrothermal gases, low pH and negative redox values all of which returned to normal seawater values at distances of about 400 m from the main vents. Much of the bay around the vents is corrosive to calcium carbonate; the north shore has a gradient in seawater carbonate chemistry that is well suited to studies of the effects of long-term increases in CO2 levels. This shoreline lacks toxic compounds (such as H2S) and has a gradient in carbonate saturation states. 相似文献
Recent seismicity in and around the Gargano Promontory, an uplifted portion of the Southern Adriatic Foreland domain, indicates active E–W strike-slip faulting in a region that has also been struck by large historical earthquakes, particularly along the Mattinata Fault. Seismic profiles published in the past two decades show that the pattern of tectonic deformation along the E–W-trending segment of the Gondola Fault Zone, the offshore counterpart of the Mattinata Fault, is strikingly similar to that observed onshore during the Eocene–Pliocene interval. Based on the lack of instrumental seismicity in the south Adriatic offshore, however, and on standard seismic reflection data showing an undisturbed Quaternary succession above the Gondola Fault Zone, this fault zone has been interpreted as essentially inactive since the Pliocene. Nevertheless, many investigators emphasised the genetic relationships and physical continuity between the Mattinata Fault, a positively active tectonic feature, and the Gondola Fault Zone. The seismotectonic potential of the system formed by these two faults has never been investigated in detail. Recent investigations of Quaternary sedimentary successions on the Adriatic shelf, by means of very high-resolution seismic–stratigraphic data, have led to the identification of fold growth and fault propagation in Middle–Upper Pleistocene and Holocene units. The inferred pattern of gentle folding and shallow faulting indicates that sediments deposited during the past ca. 450 ka were recurrently deformed along the E–W branch of the Gondola Fault Zone.We performed a detailed reconstruction and kinematic interpretation of the most recent deformation observed along the Gondola Fault Zone and interpret it in the broader context of the seismotectonic setting of the Southern Apennines-foreland region. We hypothesise that the entire 180 km-long Molise–Gondola Shear Zone is presently active and speculate that also its offshore portion, the Gondola Fault Zone, has a seismogenic behaviour. 相似文献
The concept of aquifer vulnerability is certainly useful in the field of groundwater protection. Nevertheless, within the scientific community, the definition of vulnerability is still under debate and lacks standardisation. As a consequence, the methods for evaluating the vulnerability degree are numerous and often lead to conflicting results. Thus, in this study, three methods that are commonly used in groundwater vulnerability assessments due to their easy application (namely DRASTIC, GOD and TOT) were utilised in four areas of the Piedmont region (NW Italy). The results obtained by the different methods were compared and correlated with the nitrate concentrations in the groundwater. The aims of the study were (i) to evaluate the effectiveness of the adopted methods and their comparability, (ii) to discuss the limits of the intrinsic vulnerability methods and (iii) to verify the applicability of nitrate as a tracer in the assessment of groundwater vulnerability or explain the reasons why it is not applicable. It was observed that the three intrinsic vulnerability methods are not able to uniquely identify the most or least vulnerable areas. Additionally, the comparison of the intrinsic vulnerability indexes only occasionally showed a reasonable correlation. Furthermore, there was no clear correlation between the vulnerability indexes and nitrate concentrations in the groundwater. These results could be explained by several reasons: (1) the methods are mostly based on the level of groundwater protection provided by the overlaying lithologies and do not consider the physical processes occurring in the aquifer; (2) the intrinsic vulnerability methods only consider vertical pathways for contaminants, but a pre-existing contaminant could be present in the aquifer; (3) groundwater nitrate concentrations are affected by the nitrate input and surplus; and (4) nitrates are subject to physical and biological attenuation in aquifers and cannot necessarily be considered stable tracers in the assessment of groundwater vulnerability. 相似文献
A seismic sequence in central Italy from August 2016 to January 2017 affected groundwater dynamics in fractured carbonate aquifers. Changes in spring discharge, water-table position, and streamflow were recorded for several months following nine Mw 5.0–6.5 seismic events. Data from 22 measurement sites, located within 100 km of the epicentral zones, were analyzed. The intensity of the induced changes were correlated with seismic magnitude and distance to epicenters. The additional post-seismic discharge from rivers and springs was found to be higher than 9 m3/s, totaling more than 0.1 km3 of groundwater release over 6 months. This huge and unexpected contribution increased streamflow in narrow mountainous valleys to previously unmeasured peak values. Analogously to the L’Aquila 2009 post-earthquake phenomenon, these hydrogeological changes might reflect an increase of bulk hydraulic conductivity at the aquifer scale, which would increase hydraulic heads in the discharge zones and lower them in some recharge areas. The observed changes may also be partly due to other mechanisms, such as shaking and/or squeezing effects related to intense subsidence in the core of the affected area, where effects had maximum extent, or breaching of hydraulic barriers.
The numerical integration of the stress–strain relationship is an important part of many finite element code used in geotechnical engineering. The integration of elasto-plastic models for unsaturated soils poses additional challenges associated to the presence of suction as an extra constitutive variable with respect to traditional saturated soil models. In this contribution, a range of explicit stress integration schemes are derived with specific reference to the Barcelona Basic Model (BBM), which is one of the best known elasto-plastic constitutive models for unsaturated soils. These schemes, however, do not address possible non-convexity of the loading collapse (LC) curve and neglect yielding on the suction increase (SI) line. The paper describes eight Runge–Kutta methods of various orders with adaptive substepping as well as a novel integration scheme based on Richardson extrapolation. The algorithms presented also incorporate two alternative error control methods to ensure accuracy of the numerical integration. Extensive validation and comparison of different schemes are presented in a companion paper. Although the algorithms presented were coded for the Barcelona Basic Model, they can be easily adapted to other unsaturated elasto-plastic models formulated in terms of two independent stress variables such as net stress and suction. 相似文献
This report of the Swiss Seismological Service summarizes the seismic activity in Switzerland and surrounding regions during 2009. During this period, 450 earthquakes and 68 quarry blasts were detected and located in the region under consideration. The three strongest events occurred about 15 km NW of Basel in southern Germany (ML 4.2), near Wildhaus in the Toggenburg (ML 4.0) and near Bivio in Graubünden (ML 3.5). Although felt by the population, they were not reported to have caused any damage. With a total of 24 events with ML ≥ 2.5, the seismic activity in the year 2009 was close to the average over the previous 34 years. 相似文献