Integrated coastal zone management in Italy: a gap between science and policy

This paper introduces the need, in Italian countries, of a real integration of scientific knowledge into coastal policy. Actually, in Italy, still exists a gap between Science and Policy, interfering the implementation of an Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) process, while there is no coordination between local, regional and national authorities. This lack of an overall strategy has induced some regions to adopt regional plans for the sustainable development of their coastal areas, to compensate the shortcomings of a national planning. Besides, along Italian coasts, there is a heavy landscape urbanization producing conditions of environmental decay and highlighting the risk of erosions in littoral areas. In this critical context, it is necessary to adopt an effective Integrated Coastal Zone Management policy, to connect ecosystem and environmental approaches with the social and economic development of coastal areas. So, in Italian landscape, it is necessary to integrate the national cultural heritage into coastal management, joining scientific and cultural issues. In this framework, ICZM process could play an important role connecting scientists and policy makers towards an effective integration for the social and economic growth of local people

CONODONT BIOSTRATIGRAPHY OF THE LATE TRIASSIC SEQUENCE OF MONTE COCUZZO (CATENA COSTIERA, CALABRIA, ITALY)

Preliminary results are reported from an investigation of the conodont associations found in the Late Triassic carbonate succession of the so-called "Catena Costiera Calabrese" that crops out in the tectonic window of Monte Cocuzzo. The succession of Colle del Crapio consists of alternating carbonate mud, breccia and calciturbidites deposited in a toe-of-slope to basin setting and contains rich and well-preserved conodont faunas pertaining to two biozones. The lower zone is characterised by the occurrence of Epigondolella slovakensis and may be referred to the Late Norian (Sevatian). The upper zone is characterised by Misikella hernsteini associated with M. posthernsteini. The chronostratigraphic setting of the latter zone is more controversial, as it may be regarded as latest Sevatian (Upper Norian) according to Krystyn (1990) and Golebiowski (1990), while according to the zonation of Kozur & Mock (1991) the first occurrence of M. posthernsteini marks the beginning of the Rhaetian stage.  &nbsp

The quality of life conditioning with reference to the local environmental management: A pattern in Bivona country (Calabria, Southern Italy)

The increasing landscape urbanization, through goods and services production, as required by people needs, is often cause of environmental decay producing a sharp decrease in quality life for resident population. This paper aims to study some negative environmental feedbacks and the increase of geomorphological hazards in the coastal area, roughly urbanized, of Bivona country (Vibo Valentia, Calabria,Southern Italy). The analysis shows how the wrong and chaotic urban development, without any appropriate town planning scheme, has produced growing conditions of environmental decay with time. Consequently, it has been detected a decrease of prices in market estate commonly used as a marker of Human Quality Life. For this purpose, it has been applied the Hedonic model able to supply useful information about the gained or the reduced values of building industry caused by the improvement or by the worsening of environmental health conditions. The results highlight, with quantitative data, how the sustainable development of landscape must be realized through goods and services production respecting the environmental limits, in order to avoid negative territorial feedbacks able to decrease Human Quality Life. It has also been proposed a graphical representation about the trend of Human Quality Life in function of goods and services production

Modeling Shallow Landslide Susceptibility and Assessment of the Relative Importance of Predisposing Factors, through a GIS-Based Statistical Analysis

Shallow landslides are destructive hazards and play an important role in landscape processes. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the shallow landslide susceptibility and to investigate which predisposing factors control the spatial distribution of the collected instability phenomena. The GIS-based logistic regression model and jackknife test were respectively employed to achieve the scopes. The studied area falls in the Mesima basin, located in the southern Calabria (Italy). The research was based mainly on geomorphological study using both interpretation of Google Earth images and field surveys. Thus, 1511 shallow landslides were mapped and 18 predisposing factors (lithology, distance to faults, fault density, land use, soil texture, soil bulk density, soil erodibility, distance to streams, drainage density, elevation, slope gradient, slope aspect, local relief, plan curvature, profile curvature, TPI, TWI, and SPI) were recognized as influencing the shallow landslide susceptibility. The 70% of the collected shallow landslides were randomly divided into a training data set to build susceptibility model and the remaining 30% were used to validate the newly built model. The logistic regression model calculated the landslide probability of each pixel in the study area and produced the susceptibility map. Four classification methods were tested and compared between them, so the most reliable classification system was employed to the shallow landslide susceptibility map construction. In the susceptibility map, five classes were recognized as following: very low, low, moderate, high, and very high susceptibility. About 26.1% of the study area falls in high and very high susceptible classes and most of the landslides mapped (82.4%) occur in these classes. The accuracy of the predictive model was evaluated by using the ROC (receiver operating characteristics) curve approach, which showed an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.93, proving the excellent forecasting ability of the susceptibility model. The predisposing factors importance evaluation, using the jackknife test, revealed that slope gradient, TWI, soil texture and lithology were the most important factors; whereas, SPI, fault density and profile curvature have a least importance. According to these results, we conclude that the shallow landslide susceptibility map can be use as valuable tool both for land-use planning and for management and mitigation of the shallow landslide risk in the study area

A New Coastal Erosion Risk Assessment Indicator: Application to the Calabria Tyrrhenian Littoral (Southern Italy)

Littoral plains are exposed to natural phenomena such as sea-waves, tides, rainfalls and sea-level rise but also to human pressure, determining a growing exposure of the natural and man-made environments to hazard conditions. Through this work, a new kind of multiple approach is proposed to evaluate the coastal risk due to erosion processes, which was first tested on the Calabria Tyrrhenian coast. The resulting data show that 35% of the coastal stretches are classified into very high risk category, 30% into high risk, 28% into medium risk and only 7% into low risk. The coastal areas, characterized by high and very high levels of risk, are formed by sandy beaches and distributed mainly at the northern side of the regional coastline while the southern part, distinguished mainly by rocky outlines, shows lower risk levels. The comparison between the calculated risk values and the real conditions of the damage state shows a good correspondence, testifying the pertinence of the new methodology. The latter is based on indices with data easily available, making the procedure fast and simple to use and applicable mainly for large scale surveys. The achieved good results suggest that the new methodology used to evaluate the coastal risk condition may be also extended to other Mediterranean beaches

The Coastal Sustainability Standard method: a case study in Calabria (Southern Italy)

Coastal regions and river basins hold a great variety of geological, ecological, social and economic roles mutually dependent and interacting. So, a global approach of these sensitive and transitional areas should include their seaward and landward sides. By this way, the Organization of United Nations has suggested a new management pattern of littoral zones named Integrated Coastal Area and River basin Management, able to merge, into the same landscape unit, marine, coastal and riverine systems. However, in italian seaboard areas, there is a total lack of an overall strategy to carry out national and/or regional plans for a sustainable development of coastal regions. In this regard, also in the Calabria region (Southern Italy) the suggested new kind of holistic approach is totally neglected although its coastline shows a broad extent of 715 km and the hydrographic network is made up by 1003 catchments forming a complex drainage system. This new kind of coastal management was verified through the application of a Coastal Sustainability Standard method applied, for the first time in Italy, in a study area in the western seaside of Calabria. The results of the field survey highlight a total failure of an inclusive coastal management process capable to realize a comprehensive landscape planning of marine, coastal and riverine systems. Instead, Calabria could be the leader coastal region in Italy where landward and seaward sides could be connected along the ecological corridors of their river basins

Studio delle acque sorgive nel territorio comunale di Chiaravalle Centrale (CZ, Italia)

Il lavoro si propone di analizzare le caratteristiche idrogeologiche e geochimiche di alcune sorgenti, site nel bacino idrografico del torrente Beltrame nel territorio comunale di Chiaravalle Centrale (CZ, Italia). Il monitoraggio delle sorgenti attive, svolto dall’Istituto per i Sistemi Agricoli e Forestali del Mediterraneo (I.S.A.FO.M) del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (C.N.R.) - Sezione di Rende (CS, Italia) nel biennio 2008-2009, ha consentito di rilevare e misurare i principali parametri chimico-fisici e idrologici di tali emergenze per valutare il loro grado di potabilità e le relative caratteristiche idrodinamiche. Le analisi dei dati raccolti hanno evidenziato buone condizioni di potabilità ed hanno permesso di distinguere due gruppi di sorgenti caratterizzati da differenti velocità di deflusso e da ritardi di piena, rispetto ai valori di precipitazione, variabili tra uno e due mesi

Multi-approach for the assessment of rock slope stability using in-field and UAV investigations

The present study is aimed at analyzing the rockfall phenomena involving a carbonate rock scarp in San Donato di Ninea village (Calabria, south Italy), where some buildings and a portion of a road are exposed to a high hazard condition. The geomechanical investigations of the rock scarp were performed through a multi-approach based on in-field investigations, geophysical surveys, and high resolution of images acquired by a drone. The achieved data allowed to assess the quality of the rock mass and the susceptibility of rock slope to failure through the Rock Mass Rating and the Slope Mass Rating clas sifications, respectively. The obtained results showed slope conditions ranging between unstable and completely unstable. Geophysical surveys allowed to investigate the subsurface material and showed a high jointing rock mass in the shallower portion. In order to acquire the potential change in geomechanical features on the whole escarpment rock, high-resolution images were acquired by a drone. Thus, a 3D dense point cloud model was reconstructed in a setting of high accuracy based on 55 million of points with a density of 748.85 points for m2. The 3D model was imported into CloudCompare software to extract the geological planes through FACETS plugin, which allowed to recognize the jointing sets on the whole surface of rock escarpment. The digital data were compared with the ones collected by scanline method in order to verify their soundness, and further detailed digital investigations were carried out on human inaccessible areas to examine the corresponding fracturing degree