Characterization of landslide ground surface kinematics from terrestrial laser scanning and strain field computation

Assessment and mitigation of the risk induced by landslide activation need an appropriate phenomenon investigation, to obtain useful information about the failure processes. The first step is the complete kinematics characterization of the landslide ground surface, by evaluating the involved displacement and deformation patterns. A dense displacement field can be obtained from comparison of a series of multi-temporal observations performed by means of terrestrial laser scanning. Subsequently, the strain field can be computed from displacement vectors. In this paper, a modified least square technique is employed to compute the strain on the nodes of a regular grid (2D approach) or on the points of a digital terrain model (3D approach). Such a computation takes into account the displacements, their spatial distribution, as well as the measurement and modelling errors. A scale factor is introduced in order to emphasize the contributions of the experimental points on the basis of their distance from each computation point, and to recognize possible scale-depending behaviours. This method has been implemented in Matlab and applied on two landslides located in the northeastern Italian Alps (Lamosano and Perarolo di Cadore). The experiments show that different kinematics can be recognized, and the presence and influence of eventual discontinuities can be revealed.     

Scaling relations of the colour-detected cluster RzCS 052 at z= 1.016 and some other high-redshift clusters

This paper investigates the possibility that ultra-compact dwarf (UCD) galaxies in the Fornax cluster are formed by the threshing of nucleated, early-type dwarf galaxies (hereafter dwarf galaxies).
Similar to the results of Côté et al. for the Virgo cluster, we show that the Fornax cluster observations are consistent with a single population in which all dwarfs are nucleated, with a ratio of nuclear to total magnitude that varies slowly with magnitude. Importantly, the magnitude distribution of the UCD population is similar to that of the dwarf nuclei in the Fornax cluster.
The joint population of UCDs and the dwarfs from which they may originate is modelled and shown to be consistent with a Navarro, Frenk & White (NFW) profile with a characteristic radius of 5 kpc. Furthermore, a steady-state dynamical model reproduces the known mass profile of Fornax. However, there are a number of peculiarities in the velocity dispersion data that remain unexplained.
The simplest possible threshing model is tested, in which dwarf galaxies move on orbits in a static cluster potential and are threshed if they pass within a radius at which the tidal force from the cluster exceeds the internal gravity at the core of their dark matter halo. This fails to reproduce the observed fraction of UCDs at radii greater than 30 kpc from the core of Fornax.     

Tectonics,sea-level changes and palaeoenvironments in the early Pleistocene of Rome (Italy)

The historical site of the Monte Mario lower Pleistocene succession (Rome, Italy) is an important marker of the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary. Recently, the Monte Mario site was excavated and restudied. A spectacular angular unconformity characterizes the contact between the Monte Vaticano and the Monte Mario formations, which marks the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary. Biostratigraphical analyses carried out on ostracod, foraminifer, and calcareous nannofossil assemblages indicate an Early Pliocene age (topmost Zanclean, 3.81–3.70 Ma) for the underlying Monte Vaticano Formation, whereas the Monte Mario Formation has been dated as early Pleistocene (Santernian, 1.66–1.59 Ma). Palaeomagnetic analyses point to C2Ar and C1r2r polarity chrons for the Monte Vaticano and the Monte Mario formations, respectively. The Monte Mario Formation consists of two obliquity-forced depositional sequences (MM1 and MM2) characterized by transgressive systems tracts of littoral marine environments at depths, respectively, of 40–80 m and 15–20 m. The data obtained from foraminifer and ostracod assemblages allow us to reconstruct early Pleistocene relative sea-level changes near Rome. At the Plio/Pleistocene transition, a relative sea-level drop of at least 260 m occurred, as a result of both tectonic uplift of the central Tyrrhenian margin and glacio-eustatic changes linked to early Pleistocene glaciation (Marine Isotope Stage 58).     

Composition of Coronal Streamers from the SOHO Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer

The Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer on the SOHO satellite covers the 940–1350 Å range as well as the 470–630 Å range in second order. It has detected coronal emission lines of H, N, O, Mg, Al, Si, S, Ar, Ca, Fe, and Ni, particularly in coronal streamers. Resonance scattering of emission lines from the solar disk dominates the intensities of a few lines, but electron collisional excitation produces most of the lines observed. Resonance, intercombination and forbidden lines are seen, and their relative line intensities are diagnostics for the ionization state and elemental abundances of the coronal gas. The elemental composition of the solar corona and solar wind vary, with the abundance of each element related to the ionization potential of its neutral atom (First Ionization Potential–FIP). It is often difficult to obtain absolute abundances, rather than abundances relative to O or Si. In this paper, we study the ionization state of the gas in two coronal streamers, and we determine the absolute abundances of oxygen and other elements in the streamers. The ionization state is close to that of a log T = 6.2 plasma. The abundances vary among, and even within, streamers. The helium abundance is lower than photospheric, and the FIP effect is present. In the core of a quiescent equatorial streamer, oxygen and other high-FIP elements are depleted by an order of magnitude compared with photospheric abundances, while they are depleted by only a factor of 3 along the edges of the streamer. The abundances along the edges of the streamer (‘legs’) resemble elemental abundances measured in the slow solar wind, supporting the identification of streamers as the source of that wind component.     

Wet deposition due to fog in the Po Valley,Italy

Wet deposition due to radiation fog is examined in this paper. The area where the reported measurements were performed, the Po Valley, northern Italy, is characterized by both a high fog occurrence during the fall-winter months and fog water solutions of high ionic concentration and acidity.Estimated wet deposition for NH ₄ ⁺ , NO _inf3 ^sup- and SO _inf4 ^sup2- ions due to fog droplet settling to the ground accounts for 13.2, 12.1 and 5.3 percent with respect to bulk precipitations over the same period: January–March and October–December (fog season).Fog deposition rates show that this process can be an important pathway of trace gases and particles loss from the air. First indicative results of fog removal efficiency with respect to air particulate matter are presented.Dry deposition parameters should be taken into account in evaluating the potential effect of fog droplet deposition on vegetation.     

Sediment delivery processes and the spatial distribution of caesium-137 in a small Sicilian basin

The sediment delivery processes occurring in a small Sicilian basin are modelled using the spatially distributed SEDD model recently proposed by Ferro and Minacapilli. The model is applied by using soil data (grain-size distribution, organic matter content, etc.) of 129 samples uniformly distributed over the study area and compiling the available information (topographic map, soil data, etc.) into a Geographical Information System. Finally, the predictive capability of the distributed sediment delivery approach is tested experimentally using the caesium-137 measurement technique. The comparison between calculated sediment yield and the corresponding measured caesium-137 loss is used to validate the SEDD model at the scale of both the single morphological unit and the entire basin. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the chaotic diffusion in multidimensional Hamiltonian systems

We present numerical evidence that diffusion in the herein studied multidimensional near-integrable Hamiltonian systems departs from a normal process, at least for realistic timescales. Therefore, the derivation of a diffusion coefficient from a linear fit on the variance evolution of the unperturbed integrals fails. We review some topics on diffusion in the Arnold Hamiltonian and yield numerical and theoretical arguments to show that in the examples we considered, a standard coefficient would not provide a good estimation of the speed of diffusion. However, numerical experiments concerning diffusion would provide reliable information about the stability of the motion within chaotic regions of the phase space. In this direction, we present an extension of previous results concerning the dynamical structure of the Laplace resonance in Gliese-876 planetary system considering variations of the orbital parameters accordingly to the error introduced by the radial velocity determination. We found that a slight variation of the eccentricity of planet c would destabilize the inner region of the resonance that, though chaotic, shows stable when adopting the best fit values for the parameters.     

Improving strain rate estimation from velocity data of non-permanent GPS stations: the Central Apennine study case (Italy)

An efficient procedure is proposed to define realistic lower limits of velocity errors of a non-permanent GPS station (NPS), i.e., a station where the antenna is installed and operates for short time periods, typically 10–20 days per year. Moreover, the proposed method is aimed at being independent of standard GPS data processing. The key is to subsample appropriately the coordinate time series of several continuous GPS stations situated nearby or inside the considered NPS network, in order to simulate the NPS behavior and to estimate the velocity errors associated with the subsampling procedure. The obtained data are used as lower limits to accept or correct the error estimates provided by standard data processing. The proposed approach is applied to data from the dense, non-permanent network in the Central Apennine of Italy based on a sequence of solutions for the overlapping time spans 1999–2003, 1999–2004, 1999–2005 and 1999–2007. Both the original and error-corrected velocity patterns are used to compute the strain rate fields. The comparison between the corresponding results reveals large differences that could lead to divergent interpretations about the kinematics of the study area.