This work is focused on the gravity-driven instability that affect the Mt. Pruno relief and its impact on successive human settlements through historical time. The southern slope of Mt. Pruno nowadays hosts the Roscigno village but has also hosted two main settlements in the past: an Enotrian village (VI-III century B.C.) on the flat-top and the “Old Roscigno” rural village (XVI-XX century) on the southern slope, to the west of the present village. The relief is mainly composed of deformed terrigenous successions composed by varicoloured shales, mudstones and marly-clayey thin layered sequences passing upward to lithic sandstones affected by complex stratigraphic and tectonic contacts. This geological setting favoured the development of heterogeneous and complex successions of mass movements along the slopes. In this study, two main landslide systems are described. The first developed along the south-western slope of the relief and it is composed of a complex, spatio-temporal superimposition of heterogenous gravitational events, such as initial, large and deep-seated rock slope deformations, whose rock mass was affected by multiple and successive rotational slides, finally evolving in flowslides and earth flows. These movements caused the abandonment of the so called “Old Roscigno” village during the second half of the XX century and probably they could be one of the causes that induced the decline of the summit early Enotrian settlement during the III century B.C. The second landslide system developed on the southern hillslope and is mainly composed of rotational slides and flowslides, resulting from historical successive evolutionary cycles of dormant and reactivation phases. The last reactivation of a portion of the system dates back to December 2010. It was triggered by prolonged and heavy rainfalls, inducing: i) the collapse of the main provincial road that connect the “New Roscigno” village to its neighbours; ii) the strong damages of many rural buildings; and iii) the destruction of the typical terraced cultivations. Historical chronicles, multi-temporal analysis of remote sensing data and original, hierarchical and multiscale geomorphological surveys and mapping, allowed us to model the space-time topological relation of the two landslide systems and to perform different predictive evolutionary scenarios useful for the knowledge-based assessment and monitoring of the hydro-geological risk. In this perspective, the case study of Mt. Pruno can be considered as an emblematic example of how academic and administrative subjects can effectively face the recurrent landslide phenomena, avoiding further settlements deallocations. This was possible by managing the “Monte Pruno and Old Roscigno World Heritage Sites” both as the prototypal “moving geosites” and “open museum” of the rural tradition and as part of contemporary cultural cohabitation between rapid evolving landscape and human land occupation and uses.

Landslide and settlements interaction: the case of Mt. Pruno (Cilento Geopark, Italy)

Valiante, Mario
;
Bozzano, Francesca;Guida, Domenico
2019-01-01

Abstract

This work is focused on the gravity-driven instability that affect the Mt. Pruno relief and its impact on successive human settlements through historical time. The southern slope of Mt. Pruno nowadays hosts the Roscigno village but has also hosted two main settlements in the past: an Enotrian village (VI-III century B.C.) on the flat-top and the “Old Roscigno” rural village (XVI-XX century) on the southern slope, to the west of the present village. The relief is mainly composed of deformed terrigenous successions composed by varicoloured shales, mudstones and marly-clayey thin layered sequences passing upward to lithic sandstones affected by complex stratigraphic and tectonic contacts. This geological setting favoured the development of heterogeneous and complex successions of mass movements along the slopes. In this study, two main landslide systems are described. The first developed along the south-western slope of the relief and it is composed of a complex, spatio-temporal superimposition of heterogenous gravitational events, such as initial, large and deep-seated rock slope deformations, whose rock mass was affected by multiple and successive rotational slides, finally evolving in flowslides and earth flows. These movements caused the abandonment of the so called “Old Roscigno” village during the second half of the XX century and probably they could be one of the causes that induced the decline of the summit early Enotrian settlement during the III century B.C. The second landslide system developed on the southern hillslope and is mainly composed of rotational slides and flowslides, resulting from historical successive evolutionary cycles of dormant and reactivation phases. The last reactivation of a portion of the system dates back to December 2010. It was triggered by prolonged and heavy rainfalls, inducing: i) the collapse of the main provincial road that connect the “New Roscigno” village to its neighbours; ii) the strong damages of many rural buildings; and iii) the destruction of the typical terraced cultivations. Historical chronicles, multi-temporal analysis of remote sensing data and original, hierarchical and multiscale geomorphological surveys and mapping, allowed us to model the space-time topological relation of the two landslide systems and to perform different predictive evolutionary scenarios useful for the knowledge-based assessment and monitoring of the hydro-geological risk. In this perspective, the case study of Mt. Pruno can be considered as an emblematic example of how academic and administrative subjects can effectively face the recurrent landslide phenomena, avoiding further settlements deallocations. This was possible by managing the “Monte Pruno and Old Roscigno World Heritage Sites” both as the prototypal “moving geosites” and “open museum” of the rural tradition and as part of contemporary cultural cohabitation between rapid evolving landscape and human land occupation and uses.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11386/4780009
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