A case study comparing landscape metrics to geologic and seismic data from the Ischia Island (Southern Italy)
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ORIGINAL PAPER
A case study comparing landscape metrics to geologic and seismic data from the Ischia Island (Southern Italy) Rosa Nappi & Giuliana Alessio & Eliana Bellucci Sessa
Received: 6 October 2009 / Accepted: 21 April 2010 / Published online: 11 May 2010 # The Author(s) 2010. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract In this paper, a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) of the Ischia Island has been created, and a digital terrain analysis has been carried out to identify of morphostructural elements of this landscape. Ischia is an active volcano located in the Western sector of the Gulf of Naples that is characterized by historical and recent volcano-tectonic activity. The local kinematics is unclear, and so identification of tectonic lineaments might elucidate recent tectonic processes. We identify morphostructural features using geomorphic parameters derived from analysis of the high-resolution DEM. Successively, the comparison with known geologic features provides validation of the extracted morphotectonic data. We found that one of the main directions of the morphostructural lineaments extracted is consistent with the regional NE–SW extensional stress field; moreover, the lineaments on the northern flank of Mt. Epomeo are strictly correlated with the mapped faults that have a history of strong and moderate earthquakes. The technique implemented for this study area allowed us to identify new original morphostructural lineaments in a reproducible way that may be useful for investigating various landscapes where field survey is not possible. Indeed, the extracted lineaments represent potential active faults near the northern coast of the Ischia Island, where both seismicity and intense urbanization delineate a high seismic risk. R. Nappi (*) : G. Alessio : E. Bellucci Sessa Sezione di Napoli Osservatorio Vesuviano, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, via Diocleziano, 328-80124 Naples, Italy e-mail: [email protected] G. Alessio e-mail: [email protected] E. Bellucci Sessa e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Digital elevation model . Morphostructural lineaments . Tectonic geomorphology . Residual topographic surface
Introduction Digital elevation models (DEMs) provide a representation of Earth’s topography (Dymond et al. 1995; Miliaresis and Argialas 2002) from which various quantitative metrics may be extracted to allow automatic interpretation of terrain features and to characterize various processes affecting the landscape (Jordan 2003). Moreover, quantitative analysis of the topographic features contributes to study the interaction between tectonics and surface processes, providing a basis for modelling landscape evolution. Particularly, geo-morphometrical analysis of DEMs represents a methodology for studying the morphotectonics of an area quantitatively recognizing the tectonic structures (e.g., Jordan et al. 2005). The Ischia Island has been extensively studied through conventional geological approach (Vezzoli 1988; Tibaldi and Vezzoli 2004), but di
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