The interest of the scientific community about geotourism is abruptly increasing, as well as that on geoparks. According to UNESCO, geoparks should define management policies addressed to increasing the awareness of local people and tourists about Earth’s dynamics to reduce the impact of climate change and natural disasters. With this aim in mind, we tried to provide a solid scientific approach to geotourism that could be useful to the development of a geotourism strategy in the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni (CVDA) Geopark, in Southern Italy. Starting from the official inventory of the CVDA Geopark, we defined the potential Education Value (EV) and potential Touristic Value (TV) of each of the 160 sites listed by applying the Brilha method. Then we selected 20 geosites and geomorphosites with high values of both the EV and TV, and we included them in two geoitineraries. The two geoitineraries move in the inner sector of the Geopark (i.e., from the Paestum archaeological area to the Vallo di Diano basin) and along a portion of the coastal stretch (i.e., from Punta Telegrafo cape to the Lambro and Mingardo rivers’ mouths). Selected sites are representative of several geoscience disciplines (e.g., geomorphology, structural geology, quaternary geology, hydrogeology), thus suggesting that the CVDA Geopark is an ideal place where dissemination of geoscience concepts may be carried out. The latter point enhances the high geotourism potential of the area. This kind of approach was not tried before in the CVDA Geopark and can be a useful example of how to promote touristic development strategies in the area.

This study presents a comprehensive flood-hazard assessment and mapping of the Messapios River catchment in Evia Island, Greece, utilizing a combination of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Geographic Information Systems (GISs). Flood-prone zones were identified based on five critical factors, which were determined to be the most influential in the watercourse when excessive discharge overwhelms the drainage network’s capacity: slope, elevation, proximity to stream channels, geological formations, and land cover. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied to assign weights to these factors, while the final flood-hazard map was generated using the Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) method. The analysis revealed that 17.8% of the catchment, approximately 39 km², falls within a very high flood-hazard zone, while 18.02% (38.91 km²) is classified as highly susceptible to flooding. The flood-prone areas are concentrated in the central, southern, and western parts of the study area, particularly at the lower reaches of the catchment, on both sides of the main streams’ channels, and within the gently sloping, low-lying fan delta of the river. The study area has high exposure to flood hazards due to the significant population of approximately 9000 residents living within the flood-prone zones, a fact that contributes to the area’s potential vulnerability. Additionally, critical infrastructure, including five industrial facilities, the Psachna General High School, the local Public Power Corporation substation, about 21 km of the road network, and 21 bridges are located within the zones classified as having high and very high flood-hazard levels. Furthermore, about 35 km² of economically vital agricultural areas (such as parts of the Psachna and Triada plains) are situated in highly and very highly prone to floods zones. MCDA proved to be an effective and reliable approach for assessing and mapping flood-hazard distribution in the Messapios River catchment. The results provide valuable insights to assist decision-makers in prioritizing intervention areas and efficiently allocate resources.

Campi Flegrei is one of the widest and most dangerous active volcanic complexes in the Mediterranean basin, known to be affected by continuous and sudden vertical ground movements (bradyseismic crisis) that have characterized the post-calderic volcanic activity since the Late Pleistocene and particularly during the Roman period. Despite the intense volcano-tectonic processes, the area has been densely inhabited since the Greek-Roman as testified by several submerged archaeological remains here used as high-precision relative sea-level markers. By using a complex multi-technique approach made of direct, indirect morpho-acoustic and optical surveys, and stratigraphic analysis, we present a detailed reconstruction of the coastal landscape of Campi Flegrei and its surroundings between the Roman Late Republican and Early Imperial ages. The coastal scenario aims to facilitate the comprehension of how volcano-tectonic events influenced the evolution of this singular coastal landscape, and how these interfered with human activity in terms of damages and adaptation.

This research proposes a new geostatistical approach for the GIS-aided reconstruction of environmental changes related to sea-level oscillations, applied to the Cilento coastal sector between the mouth of Solofrone River and Ogliastro Marina, located along the Tyrrhenian coast of Southern Italy. As the area can be considered tectonically stable since the Late-Pleistocene, it is ideally suitable to test palaeo-environmental reconstruction methodologies. The proposed procedure is based on the creation of a geodatabase for managing sea level data and related palaeo-environmental indicators derived from bibliographic sources and new in situ surveys. These data were loaded into a GIS in order to obtain a credible geomorphological and geoarchaeological reconstruction of the target area during the late Pleistocene through spatial analysis. We reinterpreted all the sea-level markers (SLMs) to evaluate the palaeo-shoreline position, starting from sea-level index points (SLIPs) which were considered anchor points. In the absence of SLPs, palaeo-ecological data were interpreted as additional variables to assess the possible location of the shoreline and its related uncertainty. Then we confronted our data with the results deriving from the Topographic Index Position (TPI) analysis plotting them together in ArcMap. By the inte, we understood if there were any relevant sea-level stands at the time the indicators were formed. This all-encompassing methodology allowed us to obtain multiple scenarios at various time scales for the Cilento coasts over the last millennia.

This study wants to evaluate the paleo-landscape evolution since the MIS 5 of Cilento coastal sector (Tyrrhenian Sea) by means of an innovative methodology that combines traditional geostatistical techniques with machine learning applied to paleo sea-level markers (SLMs), including SLIPs, TLPs, and MLPs, integrated with morphometric DTM analysis.The study area is the Cilento coastal sector located along the Tyrrhenian coast of Southern Italy. This area preserves several features witnessing sea-level fluctuations but, despite the area having been intensely studied since 1940, no comprehensive database encompassing the local paleo sea-level evidence existed prior to this research. The area has been chosen due to its tectonic stability, which ensures consistent correlations to the same age of the markers having the same altimetric position.The initial phase involved collecting and updating data from the Campanian Natural Cavities Inventory (Russo et al., 2005) and conducting extensive field surveys. This effort resulted in the PALEOScape geodatabase (Sorrentino et al., 2023), where data were classified using new indexes: the Environmental Index Point (EIP) and Environmental Limiting Point (ELP), reflecting varying levels of uncertainty in paleo-shoreline positions. Subsequently, morphometric DTM analysis and spatial queries overlaid the geodatabase, generating a Random Forest dataset trained on 500 records. This methodology was validated with two levels of validation: a first level of statistical analysis on the training dataset, and a second level across four deeply surveyed coastal areas serving as ground truth. The accuracy of the resulting models ranged from 0.7 to 1. In this way, a prediction value was obtained even where no markers are present.The approach enabled extensive paleoenvironmental reconstructions for the Cilento region during the Last Interglacial Period, modelling scenarios at both high and low sea-level stands. These findings provide an evolutionary model of coastal changes, demonstrating the utility of integrating traditional and advanced techniques for robust paleoenvironmental analysis.In conclusion, this work offers a novel framework for large-scale paleo-coastal reconstructions, facilitating the evaluation of shoreline evolution and its implications for past human activities and future coastal management.