TY - JOUR A1 - Parisi, Serena A1 - Paternoster, Michele A1 - Kohfahl, Claus A1 - Pekdeger, Asaf A1 - Meyer, Hanno A1 - Hubberten, Hans-Wolfgang A1 - Spilotro, Giuseppe A1 - Mongelli, Giovanni T1 - Groundwater recharge areas of a volcanic aquifer system inferred from hydraulic, hydrogeochemical and stable isotope data mount Vulture, southern Italy JF - Hydrogeology journal : official journal of the International Association of Hydrogeologists N2 - Environmental isotope techniques, hydrogeochemical analysis and hydraulic data are employed to identify the main recharge areas of the Mt. Vulture hydrogeological basin, one of the most important aquifers of southern Italy. The groundwaters are derived from seepage of rainwater, flowing from the highest to the lowest elevations through the shallow volcanic weathered host-rock fracture zones. Samples of shallow and deep groundwater were collected at 48 locations with elevations ranging from 352 to 1,100 m above sea level (a.s.l.), for stable isotope (delta(18)O, delta D) and major ion analyses. A complete dataset of available hydraulic information has been integrated with measurements carried out in the present study. Inferred recharge elevations, estimated on the basis of the local vertical isotopic gradient of delta(18)O, range between 550 and 1,200 m a.s.l. The isotope pattern of the Quaternary aquifer reflects the spatial separation of different recharge sources. Knowledge of the local hydrogeological setting was the starting point for a detailed hydrogeochemical and isotopic study to define the recharge and discharge patterns identifying the groundwater flow pathways of the Mt. Vulture basin. The integration of all the data allowed for the tracing of the groundwater flows of the Mt. Vulture basin. KW - Volcanic aquifer KW - Groundwater recharge/water budget KW - Recharge elevation KW - Stable isotopes KW - Italy Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-010-0619-8 SN - 1431-2174 VL - 19 IS - 1 SP - 133 EP - 153 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maerker, Michael A1 - Pelacani, Samanta A1 - Schroeder, Boris T1 - A functional entity approach to predict soil erosion processes in a small Plio-Pleistocene Mediterranean catchment in Northern Chianti, Italy JF - Geomorphology : an international journal on pure and applied geomorphology N2 - In this paper we evaluate different methods to predict soil erosion processes. We derived different layers of predictor variables for the study area in the Northern Chianti, Italy, describing the soil-lithologic complex, land use, and topographic characteristics. For a subcatchment of the Orme River, we mapped erosion processes by interpreting aerial photographs and field observations. These were classified as erosional response units (ERU), i.e. spatial areas of homogeneous erosion processes. The ERU were used as the response variable in the soil erosion modelling process. We applied two models i) bootstrap aggregation (Random Forest: RF), and ii) stochastic gradient boosting (TreeNet: TN) to predict the potential spatial distribution of erosion processes for the entire Orme River catchment. The models are statistically evaluated using training data and a set of performance parameters such as the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), Cohen's Kappa, and pseudo R2. Variable importance and response curves provide further insight into controlling factors of erosion. Both models provided good performance in terms of classification and calibration; however, TN outperformed RF. Similar classes such as active and inactive landslides can be discriminated and well interpreted by considering response curves and relative variable importance. The spatial distribution of the predicted erosion susceptibilities generally follows topographic constraints and is similar for both models. Hence, the model-based delineation of ERU on the basis of soil and terrain information is a valuable tool in geomorphology; it provides insights into factors controlling erosion processes and may allow the extrapolation and prediction of erosion processes in unsurveyed areas. KW - Erosion processes KW - Boostrap aggregation KW - Stochastic gradient boosting KW - Spatially explicit prediction KW - Tuscany KW - Italy Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2010.10.022 SN - 0169-555X VL - 125 IS - 4 SP - 530 EP - 540 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -