Gabriele Buttafuoco

Several studies exist on the effects of chemical and physical weathering processes on different rock types as predisposing factors of landslides. However, role of morphological and physical discontinuities caused by pedogenetic processes on parent rocks as potential triggering factors of shallow landslides and related risk assessment has been poorly investigated. Also sampling strategies for geotechnical or hydrological laboratory analyses can be biased by the lack of detailed information about the soil spatial variability and of a consequent horizon-wise selection of samples from soil profiles. This research focuses on the assessment of shallow landslide susceptibility along the A3 highway section between Cosenza Sud and Altilia in northern Calabria (southern Italy). It is part of a wider project (PON01-01503: "Integrated systems for hydrogeological risk monitoring, early warning and mitigation along the main lifelines"), aimed at hydro-geological risk mitigation and earl...

Soil spectroscopy can provide low-cost and high- density data for predicting various soil properties. However, a relatively weak correlation between the spectra and the measurements of salinized soil properties makes spectroscopy difficult to use in salinity assessment, especially for low and moderately saline soils. The main objective of the study was to propose an approach based on Vis-NIR spectroscopy and geostatistics for mapping soil salinity in the Neretva river valley (Croatia). An effective spectral index (SI), which synthesizes some of saline soil properties, was defined and used as a covariate in ordinary cokriging (COK) for improving electrical conductivity (ECe) estimation. The proposed approach was compared with a univariate estimator (ordinary kriging, OK), which uses only ECe data and a multivariate estimator (ordinary cokriging, COK) using some chemical properties of primary importance in salt affected soils (Ca++, Mg++, Na+, SO4–, Cl- concentrations and pH) as covar...

1 DiBEST, Universita della Calabria, Arcavacata di Rende (CS), fabio.scarciglia@unical.it, morronefabio82@gmail.com, teresa_geo82@yahoo.it, francesco.muto@unical.it, salvatore.critelli@unical.it, davidefabbricatore@yahoo.it, lucianafilomena@hotmail.com, valeria.rago@unical.it, gaetano.robustelli@unical.it, vinstripodi@libero.it 2 CNR–ISAFOM, Rende (CS), gabriele.buttafuoco@isafom.cnr.it, massimo.conforti@isafom.cnr.it 3 DIMES, Universita della Calabria, Arcavacata di Rende (CS), difesadelsuolo@gmail.com

Gamma-rays emitted from the ground surface relate to the primary mineralogy and geochemistryof the bedrock, and the secondary weathered materials. This information can contribute significantly to anunderstanding of the geochemical and pedogenetic history of a region. The main aim of this paper was to study the relationship between ground gamma-ray data and basement geochemistry in the Lese catchment (Calabria,  southern Italy) and to map them, using geostatistics, from in-situ γ-ray spectrometry. The activities of naturally occurring radionuclides were measured at 179 locations by in situ measurements of 40K, 238U, 232Th and total radioactivity and by using gamma-ray spectrometry. Then a multi-Gaussian approach was used to explore and map the activity of naturally occurring radionuclides (40K, 238U, 232Th) and total radioactivity. Locations and lithological compositions of bedrock appear to be responsible for variations in radioelement activity. From radiometric investigations it ha...

Accounting for secondary exhaustive variables (such as elevation) in modelling the spatial distribution of precipitation can improve their estimate accuracy. However, elevation and precipitation data are associated with different support sizes and it is necessary to define methods to combine such different spatial data. The paper was aimed to compare block ordinary cokriging and block kriging with an external drift in estimating the annual precipitation using elevation as covariate. Block ordinary kriging was used as reference of a univariate geostatistical approach. In addition, the different support sizes associated with precipitation and elevation data were also taken into account. The study area was the Calabria region (southern Italy), which has a spatially variable Mediterranean climate because of its high orographic variability. Block kriging with elevation as external drift, compared to block ordinary kriging and block ordinary cokriging, was the most accurate approach for m...

The paper proposes a geostatistical framework to solve the issues of heterogeneous support for spatial estimation. Apparent soil electrical conductivity (ECa) was measured in a field cropped with San Marzano tomato using a multiple frequency electromagnetic profiler with 6 operating frequencies. Mixed support kriging was used to estimate ECa taking into account the change of support. The method includes punctual kriging with the error being the dispersion variance associated with each frequency. The individual ECa maps were weighted by the dispersion variance to obtain a map which was used for field partition in management zones.

Northeast China is an intensive area of resource-exhausted city, which is facing the challenges of industry conversion and sustainable development. In order to evaluate the soil environmental quality influenced by mining activities over decades, the concentration and spatial distribution of arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), and Zinc (Zn) in surface soils (0-20cm) of a typical resource-exhausted city were investigated by analyzing 306 soil samples. The results showed that the average concentrations in the samples were 6.17 mg/kg for As, 0.19 mg/kg for Cd, 51.08 mg/kg for Cr, 23.27 mg/kg for Cu, 31.15 mg/kg for Ni, 22.17 mg/kg for Pb, and 54.21 mg/kg for Zn. Metals distribution maps produced by using the inverse distance weighted interpolation method and results revealed that all investigated metals showed distinct geographical patterns, and the concentrations were higher in urban and industrial areas than in farmland. Pearson correlation ...

The risk assessment at regional scale requires modelling spatial variability of environmental variables. Traditional approach, based on estimating point environmental indicators, cannot be considered satisfactory for this purpose, because it does not take into account spatial dependence between variables. We propose the application of an approach to the problem of groundwater salinisation, in which multivariate geostatistics and GIS are combined

Abstract Spatial distribution of concentrations of radon gas in the soil is important for defining high risk areas because geogenic radon is the major potential source of indoor radon concentrations regardless of the construction features of buildings. An area of southern ...

... (Calabria region) Gabriele Buttafuoco & Tommaso Caloiero & Roberto Coscarelli Received: 21 June 2010 /Accepted: 23 December 2010 © Springer-Verlag 2011 ... 1993; Matari et al. 1999; Brunetti et al. 2000; Lana and Burgueño 2000; Feidas et al. 2007; López-Moreno et al. ...

The study, which represents an innovative scientific strategy to approach the study of natural radioactivity in terms of spatial and temporal variability, was aimed to characterize the background levels of natural radionuclides in soil and rock in the urban and peri-urban soil of a southern Italy area; to quantify their variations due to radionuclide bearing minerals and soil properties, taking into account nature and extent of seasonality influence. Its main novelty is taking into account the effect of climate in controlling natural gamma radioactivity as well as analysing soil radioactivity in terms of soil properties and pedogenetic processes. In different bedrocks and soils, activities of natural radionuclides ((238)U, (232)Th (4) K) and total radioactivity were measured at 181 locations by means of scintillation γ-ray spectrometry. In addition, selected rocks samples were collected and analysed, using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) equipped with an Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS) and an X-Ray Powder Diffraction (XRPD), to assess the main sources of radionuclides. The natural-gamma background is intimately related to differing petrologic features of crystalline source rocks and to peculiar pedogenetic features and processes. The radioactivity survey was conducted during two different seasons with marked changes in the main climatic characteristics, namely dry summer and moist winter, to evaluate possible effects of seasonal climatic variations and soil properties on radioactivity measurements. Seasonal variations of radionuclides activities show their peak values in summer. The activities of (238)U, (232)Th and (4) K exhibit a positive correlation with the air temperature and are negatively correlated with precipitations.

ABSTRACT In the present study an approach for a climate characterization based on a statistical analysis of monthly precipitation and temperature data is presented. First, the original database (1916-2010) was homogenized and a geostatistical analysis was carried out to characterize the monthly mean distribution of the two variables in the study area. Then, temporal change of precipitation and temperature were evaluated through the Mann-Kendall test. Finally, to better assess the climate patterns in Calabria, a climatic characterization was carried out by means of the Péguy climograph. Results have shown a decreasing trend for autumn-winter rainfall and an increasing trend in summer. With respect to the average temperature, the analyses revealed a positive trend in late spring and summer, mainly due to the increase in the minimum values, and a negative trend in the autumn-winter period, mainly due to decrease in the maximum values. The analysis of the Péguy climographs allowed to divide the dataset into three groups, depending on the different elevation of the gauges. Moreover, different temporal behaviours were detected by analysing the climographs in three sub-periods.

Soil survey is generally time-consuming, labour-intensive and costly. Optimization of sampling scheme allows one to reduce the number of sampling points without decreasing or even increasing the accuracy of investigated attribute. Maps of bulk soil electrical conductivity (ECa) recorded with EMI sensors could be effectively used to direct soil sampling design for characterizing spatial variability of soil moisture. A protocol, using a field-scale bulk ECa survey, has been applied to an agricultural field in Apulia region (south-eastern Italy). Continuous spatial simulated annealing was used as a method to optimize spatial soil sampling scheme taking into account sampling constraints, field boundaries and preliminary observations. Three optimization criteria were used: the first criterion (MMSD) optimizes the spreading of the point observations over the entire field by minimizing the expectation of the distance between an arbitrarily chosen point and its nearest observation, the seco...

Sampling scheme is the major factor influencing the efficiency and costs of a survey. Moreover, in designing sampling scheme, earlier observations and knowledge on the area can provide valuable information. The aim of this study is to describe a method to optimize the spatial sampling scheme, taking physics constraints and preliminary information into account. The method is based upon a spatial simulated annealing algorithm. Spatial sampling schemes can be optimised for minimal kriging variance or distance between observations. Three case studies are presented in different pedoclimatic conditions (mountain, plane, hill) to locate 100 samples. In Val Chiavenna (mountain, SO) minimal distance between observations criterion was used. Lithology, aerial photographs and two pedological profiles were preliminary information. In Lodi (plane) preliminary information was soil use and 158 soil samples. The optimization process was carried out in two steps: 50 samples were located with the mini...