INGV reveals the secrets of mud volcanoes with data never seen before

Thanks to a unique multidisciplinary approach, the researchers were able to record the first multiparametric instrumental documentation in the world of a paroxysmsolving historical questions such as the influence of earthquakes on the activity of these structures and defining a monitoring protocol capable of intercepting the precursor signals that precede the transitions towards the most critical eruptive phases.

These results offer a new key to understanding the assessment of the environmental risk linked to the rise of cold fluids and overpressured gases such as methane and carbon dioxide which, although they generate suggestive lunar landscapes and fascinating griffins, they constitute a concrete threat to the territory if not monitored with technologies capable of distinguishing between ordinary activity and sudden explosive events.

The extensive collaboration between different sections of INGV and the Universities of Milan Bicocca, Bologna, Siena, Salerno and Palermo has guaranteed an overall vision that will culminate in the public presentation scheduled for February 20th in Fiorano Modenese, where the sharing of these unpublished data will mark the beginning of a new geological prevention strategy based on increasingly precise space-time evolution modelstransforming scientific observation into an active safety tool for the populations living near these fascinating but complex “open-air laboratories”.