Fabrizio Del Bianco

• PhD - Marine Geology
• Technician at Proambiente Scrl

Sandy beaches and the nearshore environment are dynamic coastal systems characterized by sediment mobilization driven by alternating stormy and mild wave conditions. However, this natural behavior of beaches can be altered by coastal defense structures. Repeated surveys carried out with autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) may represent an interestin...

Newly collected morphobathymetric and seismic reflection data from the Valli di Comacchio coastal lagoons, south of the Po River delta (Northeast Italy), combined with historical, remote sensing, and geodetic data highlight a complex geological evolution during the Holocene, strongly affected by anthropic control. All data allowed us to define the...

The fast ongoing progress in the field of the “open content” technologies, i.e., those hardware and software resources designed and offered to a wide community by people belonging to the open-source culture movement, strengthened and fostered by the availability of low cost, highly performing electronic devices, is creating a “revolution” in the wo...

OpenSWAP is a class of innovative open architecture, low cost autonomous vehicles for geological/geophysical studies of shallow water environments. Although they can host different types of sensors, these vehicles were specifically designed for geophysical surveys, i.e., for the acquisition of bathymetric and stratigraphic data through single- and...

River systems evolve in response to the construction of dams and artificial reservoirs, offering the possibility to investigate the short-term effects of base level oscillations on fluvial architecture. A major effort has been dedicated to the understanding of river response downstream of large dams, where deep channel incisions occur in response t...

The eastern border of the Adriatic Sea shows several examples of transitional areas marked by fragmented coastlines, islands and coastal bays. Bays and estuaries interact with the main basin influencing it and being influenced by it in terms of circulation patterns and freshwater supply. Coastal and transitional areas represent highly dynamic, rapidl...

I temi dell’ambiente, dello sviluppo sostenibile e delle nuove tecnologie sono prioritari per la Regione Emilia-Romagna; per dare concretezza a questo approccio, la Regione ha stanziato risorse provenienti dal Programma operativo del Fondo europeo di sviluppo regionale 2014-2020 (Por-Fesr) per finanziare progetti che prevedono la cooperazione tra l...

Waterborne geophysical surveys (CVES, Magnetic Subbottom) on the Trasimeno lake near the Malpasso site

One of the most intriguing feature along the entire Adriatic coast is the bay of Boka Kotorska, where the sea enters inland for over 20 km. The Bay is located along the Montenegro margin and is part of a ria coastal system surrounded by high mountains that are part of the Dinaric range. The Bay is composed by three major basins, connected by two na...

The Calabrian Arc is a narrow subduction-rollback system resulting from Africa/Eurasia plate convergence. We analysed the structural style of the frontal accretionary wedge through a multi-scale geophysical approach. Pre-stack depth-migrated crustal-scale seismic profiles unravelled the overall geometry of the subduction complex; high-resolution mu...

Boka Kotorska Bay is an enclosed water body with a narrow and shallow connection to the Adriatic Sea; the shallowest point is only 37.6 m deep at present, limiting exchange of water with the Adriatic. The Bay is one of the most important transitional areas of the Adriatic from both an environmental and a socio-economic viewpoint. High resolution ge...

L' Emilia-Romagna è caratterizzata da un complesso e articolato sistema di approvvigionamento idrico a scopo irriguo, il Sistema della bonifica emiliano-romagnola. Questo esteso reticolo di canali, di lunghezza complessiva di circa 20.000 km, è gestito e mantenuto in efficienza dalla Regione attraverso i suoi Consorzi di bonifica. L'attività di man...

A coarse-grained alluvial fan at Lipci in the Bay of Kotor, western Montenegro, was deposited in the Middle Pleistocene by a high-energy, steep gradient proglacial stream draining an outlet glacier on the Orjen massif. The fan apex is currently about 50 m above sea-level, but the majority (c. 60%) of this landform now lies offshore. Field mapping,...

Increased melting of tidewater glaciers had been widely reported in Greenland and Svalbard, and one possible reason has been attributed in the interaction of warming ocean water with the portion of the ice terminus in contact with the sea. In Kongsfjorden, there are five major tidewater glaciers positioned in the innermost part of the fjord and it...

Analyses of trace metals and organic contaminants (PCBs, PAHs, and PBDEs) were carried out in soils and sediments collected in different areas from the North of Morocco, in the framework of several bilateral projects between the Moroccan CNRST and the Italian CNR. Results indicated a situation of absent or low contamination in lagoons and salt mar...

A coarse-grained alluvial fan sequence at Lipci, Kotor Bay, in western Montenegro, provides a sedimentary record of meltwater streams draining from the Orjen Massif (1,894 m a.s.l.) to the coastal zone. At Lipci sedimentary evidence and U-series ages have been used alongside offshore bathymetric imagery and seismic profiles to establish the size of...

Abstract High-resolution multibeam morpho-bathymetric maps and a dense grid of seismic reflection profiles show relict and palimpsest geomorphologic features along the Montenegro/Northern Albanian Continental Margin. This sector of the Eastern Adriatic shelf, at the external front of the Dinarides Chain, is characterized by highly variable seafloor...

We present some examples of geophysical data acquisition carried out in different shallow-water environments, including a lake, a coastal lagoon an artificial channel and a river stream, by means of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) equipped with geophysical sensors that were designed and built for the purpose. First tests indicate that these techn...

The Montenegro/Northern Albanian Continental Margin (MACM), in the eastern Adriatic Sea, is a convergent margin at the Dinarides Chain front supplied by major fluvial systems, such as the Buna/Bojana and Drini Rivers. Analysis of high-resolution seismic reflection profiles and core samples, which included paleobiologic legacy of macrofossil assembl...

The aim of this work is the exploitation of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) for visual and acoustic characterization of the seafloor in shallow water coastal environments, through combined acquisition of echograms and video images. To this purpose, the employed vehicle is composed by two systems: i) a leading USV, equipped with an advanced missio...

Episodic gas seepage occurs at the seafloor in the Gulf of Izmit (Sea of Marmara, NW Turkey) along the submerged segment of the North Anatolian Fault (NAF), which ruptured during the 1999 Mw7.4 Izmit earthquake, and caused tectonic loading of the fault segment in front of the Istanbul metropolitan area. In order to study gas seepage and seismic ene...

With the aims of both reconstructing the geological setting of the area around the Malpasso site and to eventually find some localized remains of the battle we carried out several waterborne geophysical surveys on the Trasimeno Lake (central Italy). Adopted methodologies were: magnetic surveys, seismic reflection Chirp Sonar surveys and Continuous...

The Gulf of Saros is a triangular-shaped basin between the Gelibolu and the Thrace peninsulas, widening and deepening toward west. Since the earliest geological works, its formation has been related to the activity of the North-Anatolian Fault (NAF) system. Different mechanisms have been proposed for its development, ranging from pure extension to...

During September 2010, an instrumented oceanographic array was deployed by CNR-ISMAR in the Kongsfjorden, a narrow fjord of the Svalbard archipelago. The Kongsfjorden is 20 km long and 4-10 km wide, elongated in SE-NW direction and the exchanges with the Arctic Ocean occur at the northwestern mouth along the western coast of the Spitsbergen island....

After the 1999 Izmit earthquake (M(w)7.4), along the North-Anatolian Fault (NAF), an increase in gas emissions from the seafloor of the Sea of Marmara was observed. Using a multidisciplinary approach, that includes a combined analysis of high-resolution marine geophysical and gas-geochemical data, we determined the character of gas/fluid emissions...

We carried out a combined geophysical and gas-geochemical survey on an active fault strand along the North Anatolian Fault (NAF) system in the Gulf of İzmit (eastern Sea of Marmara), providing for the first time in this area data on the distribution of methane (CH4) and other gases dissolved in the bottom seawater, as well as the CH4 isotopic compo...

A major explosion occurred on 30 June 1908 in the Tunguska region of Siberia, causing the destruction of over 2,000 km2 of taiga; pressure and seismic waves detected as far as 1,000 km away; bright luminescence in the night skies of Northern Europe and Central Asia; and other unusual phenomena. This "Tunguska Event" is probably related to the impac...