A non-coherent surface backscattering model for radar observation of planetary bodies and its application to Cassini radar altimeter     

E. Montefredini  F. Morelli  G. Picardi  R. Seu 《Planetary and Space Science》1995,43(12)

Mission and hardware constraints make the Cassini radar altimeter working in the beam limited or pulse limited mode dependent on the radar operative mode (Low and High Resolution, respectively), but never allows work in a condition such that the pulsewidth limited circle is much smaller than the beamwidth limited circle. Unfortunately this latter condition is vital for the application of the so-called Brown model widely and successfully used in Earth (ocean) observation missions where the quoted condition is really met. In the paper a new model is discussed which is based on the same general hypotheses of the Brown model but is worked out by means of a different approach which makes it more general and independent of the specific operative conditions. An extension of the new model to take into account large mispointing angles is considered as well based on a series expansion of the Bessel function and on the analysis of the truncation error. Finally a comparison with the classical Brown model is discussed too.  相似文献   

Holocene activity of the Scilla Fault, Southern Calabria: Insights from coastal morphological and structural investigations     

L. Ferranti  C. Monaco  D. Morelli  F. Antonioli  L. Maschio 《Tectonophysics》2008,453(1-4):74

Integration of on-land and offshore geomorphological and structural investigations coupled to extensive radiometric dating of co-seismically uplifted Holocene beaches allows characterization of the geometry, kinematics and seismotectonics of the Scilla Fault, which borders the eastern side of the Messina Strait in Calabria, Southern Italy. This region has been struck by destructive historical earthquakes, but knowledge of geologically-based source parameters for active faults is relatively poor, particularly for those running mostly offshore, as the Scilla Fault does. The  30 km-long normal fault may be divided into three segments of  10 km individual length, with the central and southern segments split in at least two strands. The central and northern segments are submerged, and in this area marine geophysical data indicate a youthful morphology and locally evidence for active faulting. The on-land strand of the western segment displaces marine terraces of the last interglacial (124 to 83 ka), but seismic reflection profiles suggest a full Quaternary activity. Structural data collected on bedrock faults exposed along the on-land segment provide evidence for normal slip and  NW-SE extension, which is consistent with focal mechanisms of large earthquakes and GPS velocity fields in the region. Detailed mapping of raised Holocene marine deposits exposed at the coastline straddling of the northern and central segments supplies evidence for two co-seismic displacements at  1.9 and  3.5 ka, and a possible previous event at  5 ka. Co-seismic displacements show a consistent site value and pattern of along-strike variation, suggestive of characteristic-type behaviour for the fault. The  1.5–2.0 m average co-seismic slips during these events document M_e  6.9–7.0 earthquakes with  1.6–1.7 ka recurrence time. Because hanging-wall subsidence cannot be included into slip magnitude computation, these slips reflect footwall uplift, and represent minimum average estimates. The palaeoseismological record based on the palaeo-shorelines suggests that the last rupture on the Scilla Fault during the February 6, 1783 M_w = 5.9–6.3 earthquake was at the expected time but it may have not entirely released the loaded stress since the last great event at  1.9 ka. Comparison of the estimated co-seismic extension rate based on the Holocene shoreline record with available GPS velocities indicates that the Scilla Fault accounts for at least  15–20% of the contemporary geodetic extension across the Messina Strait.  相似文献   

Installation of a vertical slurry wall around an Italian quarry lake: complications arising and simulation of the effects on groundwater flow   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

D. A. De Luca  M. Lasagna  A. Morelli di Popolo e Ticineto 《Environmental Geology》2007,53(1):177-189

Slurry walls are non-structural barriers that are constructed underground to impede groundwater flow or manage groundwater control problems. The study area is in the Piemonte plain (Italy), close to the River Po. Quarrying works carried out below the piezometric surface created two big quarry lakes. The local groundwater system is characterized by a lower semi-confined aquifer, which is overlain by a semi-permeable bed of clayey peat (aquitard) and an upper unconfined aquifer. Locally, the peat fades away and the granulometry of this horizon becomes silty sandy. A planned enlargement of the quarry will increase the size and depth of the quarry lakes. So the aquitard bed between the two aquifers will be damaged, creating a mixing rate of groundwater. Such a procedure would not be compatible with the presence of two municipal wells upstream from the quarries. Consequently, the installation of a vertical diaphragm (slurry wall) is recommended to separate the aquifers and to act as a filter for the groundwater flowing from the unconfined to the semi-confined aquifer. To predict the consequences caused by the installation of the vertical diaphragm separating the unconfined aquifer and the semi-confined one, a specifically adjusted finite-difference model was used. The model showed a maximum rising of the water table equal to 12 cm, just upstream of the diaphragm and for a distance of about 100 m, and a maximum lowering of 2 cm just downstream of the diaphragm. However, the slurry wall would not cause any change in the piezometric head in the area where there are municipal wells and, hence, will not have any negative effect on the functionality of the municipal wells. Moreover, the migration of water from the unconfined aquifer through the vertical diaphragm will stimulate a series of attenuation and auto-depuration processes of eventual contaminants. These processes are due to the higher crossing time that the groundwater flow takes to go through the vertical barrier (t _a = 96.5 days, whereas for the horizontal semi-permeable layer t _a = 9.6 days). So, the vertical diaphragm can be a resolutive element, representing a mediation and separation factor between the unconfined and the semi-confined aquifers along the border of the quarrying areas, and a protective barrier for the water quality of the quarry lake and the semi-confined aquifer.  相似文献   

On a bora event simulated by the Eta Model     

S. Morelli  N. Berni 《Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics》2003,84(1-2):11-22

Summary ¶This study presents a numerical simulation of the bora wind as it occurs in form of a severe wind blowing down coastal mountains and over the Adriatic Sea. A typical cyclonic bora event, occurring during the period January 3–6, 1995, is simulated using a nested limited area model. An integration, with horizontal resolution of about 14km, and a nested one, with higher resolution, about 5.5km, are presented. The 1997 version of the Eta Model is used for both the lower resolution and the higher resolution runs. Numerous details of the simulation are found to be in good agreement with the understanding as well as the observational knowledge of the bora, thus supporting confidence in the realism of the results. In particular, features of the simulated flow are seen strongly indicative of some basic characteristics of the hydraulic model of the phenomenon, such as the mountain wave breaking and the upstream flow acceleration. Moreover, the increase in horizontal resolution, in combination with an improvement of the coastal SST information, led to a still improved realism of the low-level wind representation over the Adriatic Sea.Received December 31, 2001; revised March 25, 2002; accepted July 19, 2002 Published online: February 20, 2003  相似文献   

A structural and geophysical approach to the study of fractured aquifers in the Scansano-Magliano in Toscana Ridge, southern Tuscany, Italy   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Roberto Francese  Francesco Mazzarini  Andrea Bistacchi  Gianfranco Morelli  Giorgio Pasquarè  Nicola Praticelli  Henry Robain  Nigel Wardell  Annalisa Zaja 《Hydrogeology Journal》2009,17(5):1233-1246

Fresh water availability has recently become a serious concern in the Italian Apennines, as various activities rely on a predictable supply. Along the ridge between Scansano and Magliano in Toscana, in southern Tuscany, the situation is further complicated by contamination of the nearby alluvial aquifers. Aquifers locally consist of thin fractured reservoirs, generally within low-permeability formations, and it can be difficult to plan the exploitation of resources based on conventional techniques. An integrated study based on geological data investigated the link between tectonics and groundwater circulation, to better define the hydrological model. After the regional identification of fault and fracture patterns, a major structure was investigated in detail to accurately map its spatial position and to understand the geometry and properties of the associated aquifer and assess its exploitation potential. The subsurface around the fault zone was clearly imaged using ground probing radar, two-dimensional and three-dimensional resistivity tomography, and three-dimensional shallow seismic surveys. The vertical and horizontal contacts between the different geological units of the Ligurian and Tuscan series were resolved with a high degree of spatial accuracy. Three-dimensional high-resolution geophysical imaging proved to be a very effective means of characterising small-scale fractured reservoirs.  相似文献   

POLARIX: a pathfinder mission of X-ray polarimetry     

Enrico Costa  Ronaldo Bellazzini  Gianpiero Tagliaferri  Giorgio Matt  Andrea Argan  Primo Attinà  Luca Baldini  Stefano Basso  Alessandro Brez  Oberto Citterio  Sergio Di Cosimo  Vincenzo Cotroneo  Sergio Fabiani  Marco Feroci  Antonella Ferri  Luca Latronico  Francesco Lazzarotto  Massimo Minuti  Ennio Morelli  Fabio Muleri  Lucio Nicolini  Giovanni Pareschi  Giuseppe Di Persio  Michele Pinchera  Massimiliano Razzano  Luigia Reboa  Alda Rubini  Antonio Maria Salonico  Carmelo Sgro’  Paolo Soffitta  Gloria Spandre  Daniele Spiga  Alessio Trois 《Experimental Astronomy》2010,28(2-3):137-183

Since the birth of X-ray astronomy, spectral, spatial and timing observation improved dramatically, procuring a wealth of information on the majority of the classes of the celestial sources. Polarimetry, instead, remained basically unprobed. X-ray polarimetry promises to provide additional information procuring two new observable quantities, the degree and the angle of polarization. Polarization from celestial X-ray sources may derive from emission mechanisms themselves such as cyclotron, synchrotron and non-thermal bremsstrahlung, from scattering in aspheric accreting plasmas, such as disks, blobs and columns and from the presence of extreme magnetic field by means of vacuum polarization and birefringence. Matter in strong gravity fields and Quantum Gravity effects can be studied by X-ray polarimetry, too. POLARIX is a mission dedicated to X-ray polarimetry. It exploits the polarimetric response of a Gas Pixel Detector, combined with position sensitivity, that, at the focus of a telescope, results in a huge increase of sensitivity. The heart of the detector is an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chip with 105,600 pixels each one containing a full complete electronic chain to image the track produced by the photoelectron. Three Gas Pixel Detectors are coupled with three X-ray optics which are the heritage of JET-X mission. A filter wheel hosting calibration sources unpolarized and polarized is dedicated to each detector for periodic on-ground and in-flight calibration. POLARIX will measure time resolved X-ray polarization with an angular resolution of about 20 arcsec in a field of view of 15 × 15 arcmin and with an energy resolution of 20% at 6 keV. The Minimum Detectable Polarization is 12% for a source having a flux of 1 mCrab and 10⁵ s of observing time. The satellite will be placed in an equatorial orbit of 505 km of altitude by a Vega launcher. The telemetry down-link station will be Malindi. The pointing of POLARIX satellite will be gyroless and it will perform a double pointing during the earth occultation of one source, so maximizing the scientific return. POLARIX data are for 75% open to the community while 25% + SVP (Science Verification Phase, 1 month of operation) is dedicated to a core program activity open to the contribution of associated scientists. The planned duration of the mission is one year plus three months of commissioning and SVP, suitable to perform most of the basic science within the reach of this instrument. A nice to have idea is to use the same existing mandrels to build two additional telescopes of iridium with carbon coating plus two more detectors. The effective area in this case would be almost doubled.  相似文献   

The catalog of the meteorite collection of the Italian Museum of Planetary Sciences in Prato (Italy)     

Marco Morelli  Annarita Franza  Daniela Faggi  Giovanni Pratesi 《Meteoritics & planetary science》2023,58(7):945-954

For the first time, this paper presents to the planetary scientists' community the catalog of the meteorite collection preserved at the Italian Museum of Planetary Sciences (Museo Italiano di Scienze Planetarie, henceforth MISP) in Prato (Italy). Founded in 2005, MISP is a type specimen official repository approved by the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society. It represents one of the few museums worldwide entirely devoted to planetary sciences. The catalog of its meteorite collection encompasses 430 meteorites for a total of 1536 specimens, including 291 thin sections, 184 thick sections, and 278 specimens that MISP has classified. Furthermore, MISP is currently classifying 57 other meteorites. Some samples were found during meteorite recovery expeditions in hot deserts, promoted by MISP in collaboration with diverse Italian universities and national research institutions. MISP also keeps an impact rocks collection comprising 257 samples. In a country like Italy, where most of the collected meteorites are housed in museums whose catalogs are not available online, the publication of the MISP meteorite collection catalog, together with the catalog of the impact rocks collection, represents not only a significant scientific primary source but also a remarkable tool for disseminating meteoritics to nonresearch audiences in educational activities and citizen science projects.  相似文献   

Structural performance of automated multi-depth shuttle warehouses (AMSWs) under low-to-moderate seismic actions     

Kondratenko  Aleksei  Kanyilmaz  Alper  Castiglioni  Carlo Andrea  Morelli  Francesco  Kohrangi  Mohsen 《Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering》2022,20(2):1247-1295

Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering - Automated Multi-Depth Shuttle Warehouses (AMSWs) are compact storage systems that provide a large surface occupation and therefore maximum storage density....  相似文献   

Variability of the GSI Index Estimated From Different Quantitative Methods   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Gian Luca Morelli 《Geotechnical and Geological Engineering》2015,33(4):983-995

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An upgraded version of the Eta model   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

Fedor Mesinger  Sin Chan Chou  Jorge L. Gomes  Dusan Jovic  Paulo Bastos  Josiane F. Bustamante  Lazar Lazic  André A. Lyra  Sandra Morelli  Ivan Ristic  Katarina Veljovic 《Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics》2012,116(3-4):63-79

Upgrades implemented over a number of years in an open source version of the Eta model, posted at the CPTEC web site http://etamodel.cptec.inpe.br/, are summarized and examples of benefits are shown. The version originates from the NCEP’s Workstation Eta code posted on the NCEP web site http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/wrkstn_eta, which differs from the NCEP’s latest operational Eta by having the WRF-NMM nonhydrostatic option included. Most of the upgrades made resulted from attention paid to less than satisfactory performance noted in several Eta results, and identification of the reasons for the problem. Others came from simple expectation that including a feature that is physically justified but is missing in the code should help. The most notable of the upgrades are the introduction of the so-called sloping steps, or discretized shaved cells topography; piecewise-linear finite-volume vertical advection of dynamic variables; vapor and hydrometeor loading in the hydrostatic equation, and changes aimed at refining the convection schemes available in the Eta. Several other modifications have to do with the calculation of exchange coefficients, conservation in the vertical diffusion, and diagnostic calculation of 10-m winds. Several examples showing improved performance resulting from the dynamics changes are given. One includes a case of unrealistically low temperatures in several mountain basins generated by a centered vertical advection difference scheme’s unphysical advection from below ground, removed by its replacement with a finite-volume scheme. Another is that of increased katabatic winds in the Terra Nova Bay Antarctica region. Successful forecast of the severe downslope zonda wind case in the lee of the highest peaks of the Andes is also shown, and some of the recent successful verification results of the use of the upgraded model are pointed out. The code is used at numerous places, and along with setup information it is available for outside users at the CPTEC Eta web site given above.  相似文献