Maria Consiglia Rasulo
Francesco Soldovieri, Director of the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment of the National Research Council of Italy, has been announced as the recipient of the 2025 Christiaan Huygens Medal, one of the awards that the European Geosciences Union (EGU) recognises each year to eminent scientists for their outstanding research contribution to the Earth, planetary and space sciences.
In particular, the Christiaan Huygens Medal has been established to honour scientists who have achieved exceptional international standing in Geosciences Instrumentation and Data Systems in the spirit of Christiaan Huygens.
The medal will be presented during the General Assembly of the Union in Vienna, Austria, & Online from 27 April – 2 May 2025.
As part of the IEEE International Workshop on Technologies for Defense and Security (TechDefense 2024), held in Naples from November 11 to 13, 2024, Weili Tang, a PhD student at the University of Naples “Parthenope” with a scholarship funded by IREA, received the second place award in the "Best Paper Presented by a Young Researcher" category. The award recognizes the best paper written/co-written and presented by a researcher under the age of 35.
The papers were evaluated based on technical merit, originality, potential impact in the field, clarity of the written document, and the quality of the conference presentation.
The awarded paper, titled “Deep Learning-Based Persistent Scatterers Detection: First Results” (Authors: Weili Tang, University of Naples “Parthenope” and IREA-CNR; Simona Verde, CNR-IREA; Sergio Vitale, Giampaolo Ferraioli, Gilda Schirinzi, and Vito Pascazio, University of Naples “Parthenope”; Gianfranco Fornaro, CNR-IREA), focuses on the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques for the detection of Persistent Scatterers in Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (SAR).
This technology is widely used for monitoring ground deformations from space and plays a critical role in various fields related to natural risk management, particularly in the monitoring of landslides, ground deformations, and infrastructure stability.
On Thursday 12 December, as part of the activities of TERRAQUA-RS, a bilateral project coordinated by IREA-CNR within the framework of the agreement on scientific cooperation between CNR and MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology, China), Prof. Yuan ZENG and Dr. Zhaoju ZHENG from the Ecosystem Remote Sensing Lab of the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIR-CAS) will hold a webinar on the potential and applications of remote sensing for characterising plant diversity.
Through the collection and processing of in situ and remotely sensed data, the “Remote sensing of plant species and functional diversity from terrestrial to aquatic systems” (TERRAQUA-RS) project aims to develop methods for estimating taxonomic and functional diversity from optical spectral data in highly heterogeneous plant communities, ranging from aquatic to terrestrial vegetation (grassland and forest).
The event will be held from 09:30 to 11:30 with live broadcasting at the Lorenzo Busetto multimedia room of IREA Milano (CNR Area Territoriale di Ricerca di Milano 1, Via A. Corti 12 - Milan) and in virtual mode on the Teams platform.
For further information and to register for the webinar, please contact Dr. Paolo VILLA ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).
Registrations and abstract submissions for the 7th LAKES Workshop are officially OPEN!
The forthcoming Workshop on the Parameterization of Lakes in Numerical Weather Prediction and Climate Modelling is aimed at exploring the interactions between inland water bodies, such as lakes and reservoirs, and the atmosphere above, in order to improve the coupling between these two key components of the hydrological cycle.
The Workshop, organized over three days with plenary oral and poster sessions, aims to bring together scientists working on various aspects of the lake-atmosphere feedbacks and the interaction of lakes with regional and global climate.
The 7th edition of the Workshop will be held in Milan (Italy) from November 20 to 22, 2024.
The main focus is on the parameterization of lakes in numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate models. The Workshop is also open to the participation of researchers from neighboring disciplines such as physical limnology, inland water remote sensing, atmospheric physics and hydrology.
The Milan LAKES 2024 Workshop will address the following topics:
• LAKES & ATMOSPHERIC MODELING: Lake-atmosphere interactions, processes in fresh-water bodies linked to atmospheric forcing, and coupling between lake and atmosphere models.
• MODEL VALIDATION & INTERCOMPARISON: Validation of atmospheric models that incorporate lake parameterization and lake data assimilation schemes, as well as validation of lake models one-way coupled to (forced by) the atmosphere.
• ANCILLARY DATA FOR MODELING LAKES: Use of external datasets available at local to global scale to assist the generation/quality of external-parameter fields required by lake parameterization schemes in atmospheric models, e.g. fields of lake depth and lake fraction.
• NEW FRONTIERS FOR DATA ASSIMILATION FROM REMOTE SENSING: Information on snow, ice, water temperature and water transparency on lakes, reservoirs, and other water bodies from remote sensing to study lake changes and their interaction with regional and global climate.
The Milan Workshop continues from the lake-parameterization workshop series that started in Zelenogorsk (Russia, 2008) and was followed by Workshops held in Norrköping (Sweden, 2010), Helsinki (Finland, 2012), Évora (Portugal, 2015), Berlin (Germany, 2017), and Toulouse (France, 2019).
Links to the forms and additional information on https://lakesmilan2024.irea.cnr.it/
On Tuesday 16 April, as part of the EGU General Assembly 2024, an Honor Session will be held in memory of our colleague Mariarosaria Manzo, who passed away prematurely in 2022.
The proposed session is inspired by the themes that have characterized the 20-year research activity of Mariarosaria Manzo, which mainly focused on the exploitation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data for the Earth surface deformation retrieval and investigation through the application of the original Differential SAR Interferometry (DInSAR) technique and the development of advanced DInSAR methods focused on generation of deformation time series, as for the Small BAseline Subset (SBAS) approach.
The session wants to remember the legacy that Mariarosaria left. Intelligence, competence, passion, courage, poise, firmness, gentleness, determination and sweetness have left an indelible mark on the people with whom she collaborated.
Download the brochure
On 19-20 September 2024 it will be held in Milan the 13th EARSeL Forest Fire Workshop entitled “Remote Sensing of Forest Fires: Lessons learned and future challenges under a changing climate”.
The workshop has a long history and since the foundation of the Forest Fire Special Interest Group it gathers together scientists, experts, managers, local and international organizations involved in the use of Remote Sensing technologies for monitoring forest fires and their impacts on the biosphere in the framework of the climate crisis and expected climate changes.
The workshop is organized over two days with plenary oral and poster sessions. Abstracts will undergo revision by the scientific committee and accepted contributions from participants to the workshop will be published in a digital book of abstracts.
Abstract submission is open March 31, 2024 at this link
An international team of researchers from the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (CNR-IREA) in Naples and the Instituto Volcanológico de Canarias (INVOLCAN) in Tenerife (Spain) recently published an innovative study on the largest historical eruption ever recorded in La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, which occurred on September 19, 2021. The Tajogaite eruption aroused interest not only for its immediate impacts, but also for the significant amount of information obtained useful for scientific purposes.
The study, published in the prestigious journal Scientific Report, examined in detail the previous eight days and the first ten days of the eruption, revealing unknown elements of the dynamics and evolution of the island's volcanism.
“The prelude to the eruption lasted 8 days and was characterized by precursory signals that manifested themselves starting from 11 September 2021,” explains Luca D'Auria, Geophysicist and Director of the INVOLCAN Volcanic Surveillance Area. “The seismicity, with migration towards the west and towards the surface of the hypocentres”, continues D’Auria, “anticipated the onset of the imminent eruptive event”.
The permanent GPS-GNSS stations, active on the island western side, have also recorded, starting from 12 September, ground deformations of more than 15 cm, offering significant indications of the evolution of the underlying magmatic pressure. After the start of the eruption, ground deformations then reached their maximum peak on September 22nd, showing a tendency towards deflation in the following months. In particular, the observations showed that, on September 27th, the eruption suffered a pause of a few hours attributed to a temporary collapse of the surface feeding system along the active fracturing system.
To fully understand the volcano dynamics, the research team used GPS-GNSS time series and satellite data from the European Sentinel-1 constellation, examining ascending and descending orbits. The resulting source geometry revealed a dyke, which is a sub-vertical, spatially articulated intrusive magmatic structure, bent towards the east. Specifically, the aforementioned power system conditioned the rise of magma along two main branches showing a close correlation with pre-eruptive seismicity, and was also influenced by the presence of a ductile and thermally anomalous layer beneath the volcano. In-depth analyzes also revealed early surface deformations attributed to the effects of ascending hydrothermal fluids.
These results underline the importance of advanced modeling for understanding pre-eruptive processes in complex basaltic volcanoes. “The geodetic analysis carried out” states the geophysicist Pietro Tizzani, senior researcher of CNR-IREA, “has demonstrated the great potential of this technique in the study of magma ascent processes”.
The researchers involved in the study concluded that these findings provide evidence of the complexity of fracturing propagation processes and temporal changes in a volcano's surface fuel system, opening new perspectives for understanding and mitigating risks related to future eruptions.
In the figure: Schematic model of the dynamics of the magmatic supply system (Volcano Plumbing System). The orange stars represent the position of the volcanic vent compared to the days preceding the eruption. The volcano symbols, instead, represent the actual position of the current volcanic vent. The yellow arrows represent the directions of magma rise, while the green arrow indicates the incipient collapse of the magma reservoir. The blue dashed lines represent the rheological boundary limit of the system under consideration.
With 10 researchers, CNR-IREA (Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment) renewed its presence in the world ranking of the best international scientists drawn up by researchers at Stanford University and published in the prestigious scientific journal PLOS Biology.
The list of the world's “Top Scientists” contains 210,199 names of scientists who fall into the top 2% in their specific research areas. The evaluation is based on the statistical analysis of the quantity, quality and diffusion of scientific publications by over 6 million researchers from universities and research centers around the world grouped in 22 scientific fields and 174 subfields.
In the list of those who have distinguished themselves for the scientific impact of their research, considered throughout their careers until December 2022, there are Gianfranco Fornaro, Riccardo Lanari, Eugenio Sansosti, Francesco Mattia and Antonio Pepe (Geological & Geomatics Engineering area), Francesco Soldovieri and Lorenzo Crocco, (Networking & Telecommunications), Romeo Bernini (Optoelectronics & Photonics), Gloria Bordogna, (Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing). To these is added Claudia Giardino (Geological & Geomatics Engineering), who is present in the "single year 2022" list that considers the scientific productivity of 2022.
The important recognition rewards the constant commitment of IREA researchers and confirms the high quality of the Institute's scientific research.
On 8 September 2023 (22:11:00 UTC), a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck southern Morocco, causing widespread damage and thousands of fatalities. Thanks to an automated processing system developed in the framework of the Satellite data thematic core service (TCS-SATD) of the EPOS-Research Infrastructure (EPOS-RI) [1], it is now possible to shed new light on dramatic phenomena such as this one, providing valuable scientific insight to both scientists and hazards prevention activities. Developed by a team of researchers at CNR-IREA and INGV, the system is triggered by an earthquake occurrence and allows to investigate the surface deformation field induced by the considered seismic events, as well as to characterize the earthquake seismic source.
 Figure 1. Line-of-sight (LOS) displacement map computed from the Sentinel-1 18082023-11092023 descending data pair (Track 154). The white star indicates the location of the Mw 6.8 epicenter occurred on 8 September 2023 |
By applying the Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) technique to data acquired by the European Sentinel-1A satellite across the event, the system automatically generates a map of the surface displacement induced by the earthquake [2]. The map, presented in Figure 1, shows that the ground experienced a maximum displacement of about 18 cm along the satellite Line-of-Sight (LOS) and a minimum of about -5 cm. This research product is immediately shared with the scientific community through the EPOS Data Portal [3] for further analysis, while being further processed by the system to retrieve also information about the seismic source that originates the earthquake, that resulted to be a North dipping fault with an inverse mechanism and a maximum slip of about 1.7 m, as shown in Figure 2. Seismic source products are presently available at this link [4] and are going to be soon integrated within the TCS-SATD data product portfolio.
The implementation of the described system is the subject of a recent publication [5] carried out through the joint efforts of CNR-IREA and INGV researchers.
|
Figure 2: Slip distribution from geodetic data |
1. EPOS website: https://www.epos-eu.org
2. Monterroso et al. (2020). A Global Archive of Coseismic DInSAR Products Obtained Through Unsupervised Sentinel-1 Data Processing. Remote Sens., vol. 12, no. 3189, pp. 1–21. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12193189
3. EPOS Data Portal: https://www.epos-eu.org/dataportal
4. http://terremoti.ingv.it/en/finitesource_summary/36092321#SorgenteEstesa
5. Atzori et al. (2023). Automatic seismic source modeling of InSAR displacements. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, Volume 123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2023.103445
HERITAGE journal, founded in 2018 by Nicola Masini (Cnr-Ispc) and Francesco Soldovieri (Cnr-Irea), who are also its Editors in Chief, received its first Impact Factor of 1.7 in the Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate) last June.
HERITAGE is a monthly Open Access journal, indexed in Scopus, ESCI (Web of Science), and other databases. HERITAGE is dedicated to the issues of knowledge, conservation, management and protection of cultural and natural heritage, with a holistic approach ranging from technologies, best practices and social sciences.
The journal was founded with the idea of encouraging synergistic connections between different disciplines, technologies, themes, application scenarios, approaches (from multidisciplinary to trans-disciplinary), enhancing the areas of cultural and natural heritage, which increasingly represent a frontier area for new methodological and technological advances of interest also in other sectors of knowledge.
For more information about the magazine, go to this link.
Tag Cloud
Research activity in evidence
-
Spaceborne SAR tomography
Multidimensional SAR focusing, 3D (space) and 4D (space-time), more commonly…