Background

In recent years, the considerable economic and social importance of the coastal areas has led to an increasing need of knowledge on the marine environment. It has therefore become vital to establish standard procedures for assessing and managing geohazards and risk related to geological processes. These issues deal with the recognition of geological features and processes potentially dangerous.

In Italy, as in other countries, many research programs funded by national agencies already investigate marine geohazard within relatively limited areas. However, none of these initiatives resulted into a concerted and co-operative effort aiming at producing standard geohazard maps of coastal-marine areas at the national scale. MaGIC project has been conceived in order to fulfil this issue, which has become crucial in the light of recent events during which coastal areas where exposed to tsunami risk (e.g. the 2002 Stromboli Volcano landslide and related tsunami). Indeed, the continental margins of Italy are located along converging plate boundaries, they are deformed within accretionary prisms related to subduction zones, they are affected by intense seismicity and volcanic activity, and most of the coastal areas experienced severe earthquakes and tsunami in historical and/or modern time.

Project description and objectives

MaGIC Progect is funded by the Italian Civil Protection Department for producing a bathymetric database as reference for compiling maps (scale 1:50.000) of geohazards at the seafloor. During its 5-year life span (2007-2012), MaGIC will allow the acquisition of high-resolution multibeam bathymetry along the Italian continental margins and will involve the entire scientific community currently active in the field of Marine Geology within the main Italian Research Centres and Universities. More than 70.000 nautical miles of multibeam data will be analysed (of which ca. 60.000 will be acquired during the project), allowing comparison of geological features produced by sedimentary and tectonic processes (volcanic vents, active faulting, subamarine canyon activity, bedform migration, gas seepage, fluid escape, slope erosion and failure).

The main objective of MaGIC is to furnish the National Civil Protection Department accurate depiction of surficial geology and related geohazards on the most sensitive and hazard-prone areas. This issue will be accomplished by the extensive acquisition of multibeam data and by producing interpretative maps of the continental margins between –50 and –600 m water depth. These maps will form the  “Map of the elements of geohazards of the Itralian Seas”, consisting of 72 Map Sheets at scale 1:50.000. A long-term goal of MaGIC is  to produce data that can be used for a wide range of research and management issues.