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Seismic land-marine acquisition survey on the Great Ancona Landslide

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DOI: 10.3997/1873-0604.2005019

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Near Surface Geophysics, 2005, 235-243

Seismic land-marine acquisition survey

on the Great Ancona Landslide
E. Stucchi1*, F. Zgur2 and L. Baradello2
1
Earth Sciences Dept., Geophysics, University of Milan, Italy
2
Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale – OGS, Sgonico (TS), Italy

Received September 2004, revision accepted April 2005

ABSTRACT
The paper deals with a reflection seismic acquisition survey carried out on the Great Ancona Landslide,
a huge landslide body on the Italian Adriatic coast involving part of the city of Ancona. To investigate
the area we carried out a joint land-marine seismic acquisition that gave us a continuous image of the
subsurface in the land-sea transition zone where the landslide foot is supposed to be located. A specif-
ically designed interface unit connected the analog ocean-bottom cable (OBC) lying along the sea-floor
to the telemetry system used on land. The effectiveness of different source types for both marine and
land shooting was tested in the field, by computing and analysing the frequency-time (FT) response of
the recorded seismograms. The various sub-datasets obtained (land-land, land-marine, marine-land and
marine-marine) were kept separate because of the different signal properties and the kinds of noise pres-
ent; a short description of such noise is given. Finally, the acquisition statistics are discussed, and a pre-
liminary image of the subsurface in time has been achieved from the marine-marine data.

INTRODUCTION FIGURE 1
The Adriatic coast in Italy is characterized by several landslide The study area.
bodies, some of which are huge. The most famous is the Great The landslide body
Ancona Landslide located immediately to the west of the coastal lies within the bold
city of Ancona; it involves an area of about 3.5 km2 and has a contour line.
landslide front of about 2 km (Fig.1). Geologically, the area con-
sists of a sequence of marly clays stratified with silty and sandy
beds (lower and middle Pliocene) covered by silty clays interbed-
ded with thin layers of sandstone and sand (Pleistocene) in trans-
gressive order. Alluvial and colluvial clays, and silts are deposit-
ed on top of this. During the Pliocene and Pleistocene eras, tec-
tonic activity was intense, and there was a strong uplift of the
Quaternary sediments to more than 250 m a.s.l. (Cotecchia 1997).
The main tectonic lineaments are orientated either parallel or
orthogonal to the Apennine trend (NW–SE or NE–SW), and there
is an average slope of about 10° with successions of scarps and
trenches characterizing the morphology of the landslide area.
The most severe event took place on 13th December 1982, and
a densely built-up part of the city was involved in the eastern sec- 1983) have resulted in a large quantity of geotechnical, geologi-
tion of the landslide. A maximum vertical displacement of 6 m cal and geophysical data, including a grid of high-resolution
(uplift along the coast) and a maximum horizontal displacement marine seismic lines located approximately 200 m offshore. In
of 11 m were recorded. The landslide mass is still active. Its vicin- addition to such data, several marine and land profiles acquired
ity to the city centre and the presence of several houses and build- by ENI-AGIP for hydrocarbon exploration are available, and
ings within the area, as well as the crossing of the main Adriatic were helpful in deciphering the geological assets of the region.
railway and the Flaminia road, make this a very sensitive spot. Because the available high-resolution seismic data pertain
Many studies carried out in the past (Camerti geologic study, mainly to the area adjacent to the landslip, a new 2D P-wave
high-resolution seismic line was designed to cross the entire land-
*
eusebio.stucchi@unimi.it slide body from sea to land, and also to fill the gap between the

© 2005 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers 235

236 E. Stucchi, F. Zgur and L. Baradello

mercial DMT Summit 24-bit resolution seismic telemetry system

(Knapp and Steeples 1986b) that consisted of 182 two-channel
recorders (remote units - RU) with an overall recording capabil-
ity of 364 channels. Each RU amplifies, digitizes and stores the
data until ordered to transmit it digitally, via a simple two-wire
data link, to the Central Unit (PC board). The RU’s snap connec-
tors allow the units to be placed anywhere along the line, mak-
FIGURE 2 ing it possible to get station intervals ranging from a few decime-
Schematic view of the sea-land acquisition system. The recording instru- tres to tens of metres.
mentation was located on-shore; 24 of the 182 Summit RUs were dedi- 2 An analog OBC. This consisted of 48 hydrophones (natural
cated to storing the data from the OBC that was linked to the telemetry frequency 10 Hz) spaced 5 m apart. The cable was laid down and
system by means of a specifically designed interface unit. Trigger signals retrieved from a small boat that also accommodated the marine
were transmitted via radio link. source (GI gun).
3 An interface unit. The telemetry system and the sea-bottom
grid of marine lines and the coastline where the landslide foot is cable were connected by means of an interface unit specifically
presumed to lie. The direction chosen for this marine-land survey designed and realized for this application. The interface unit
was orthogonal to the coast and to the visible trenches, i.e. N–S allowed the OBC analog output to be digitized in the RUs of the
orientation (Fig. 1) (Stucchi et al. 2003; Thomas et al. 2002). onshore telemetry system. In this way it was possible to obtain a
We deal here with the difficulties and problems encountered, continuous sea-land spread of 48 marine channels and about 100
and the solutions we found in order to acquire this high-resolu- land channels. With this configuration, we could simultaneously
tion land-marine seismic profile (Steeples 1998; Steeples and record land-land, land-marine, marine-land and marine-marine
Miller 1998). The processing and interpretation of the results, data, without any dramatic coverage loss in the transition zone.
and how these compare with the results of other methodologies The acquisition operations were carried out onshore by the
(in particular radar interferometry), are addressed in other works land observer and, depending on the source being employed, the
(Stucchi et al. 2003; Mazzotti and Rocca 2003). time breaks were transmitted to the recorder via radio-link when
marine shooting and via trigger unit when land shooting.
THE STUDY AREA Two separate crews were mobilized at the same time: one oper-
The planned profile extended a total length of almost 1600 m, ated from a small vessel to lay down the OBC and to carry out
about 235 m off-shore and 1320 m on land (Figs 1 and 3b). The marine energization and navigation (using a NavPRO navigation
Adriatic railway track and the Flaminia road were crossed by the system connected to a DGPS Ag123 for positioning); the other
profile along the shore line, and as a consequence, a 50 m gap had crew carried out the land energization and recording operations.
to be left between the last sea station and the first land station. This acquisition technique allowed the entire body of the
The overall height of the land profile was approximately 250 m; landslide to be crossed from land to sea, for a total length of
the first part, to the north, was characterized by steep slopes with almost 1.6 km.
such dense vegetation that clearing was needed to allow the pas-
sage of the drilling unit and the cable crew. The second part of ACQUISITION PARAMETERS
the profile ran more gently uphill over cultivation, to end in the The most significant acquisition parameters are given in Table 1.
southern part almost at the top of a hill, some tens of metres from The nominal maximum source–receiver offset was set at
a radio relay station that caused severe interference as its electro- 600 m, fully compatible with the depth of the main target. A 5 m
magnetic emissions added very troublesome noise to the data
and affected GPS reception. TABLE 1
Acquisition parameters
THE ACQUISITION SYSTEM
In order to achieve sea-land data continuity without loss of cov- Marine acquisition Land acquisition
erage, both land and marine sources and receivers were
employed. An ocean-bottom cable (OBC) was used alongside a Active channels 48 Active channels 120 min.
commercial land telemetry system to form a continuous sea-land Hydrophones 10 Hz Geophones 20 Hz
profile. This allowed the simultaneous acquisition of marine- Station interval 5m Station interval 5m
marine, marine-land, land-marine and land-land data. Source Airgun Source Dynamite
The system (Fig. 2) consisted basically of three main compo- Shot interval Variable Shot interval 10 m
nents (Zgur et al. 2003, poster presented at DelTech Workshop, Shot depth 1.5 m Shot depth 2.8 m
Venice, Italy): Volume 0.66/1.32 l Charge 140 g
1 A land telemetry system. For the land survey we used a com- Marine profile length 235 m Land profile length 1320 m

© 2005 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Near Surface Geophysics, 2005, 3, 235-243

station interval was chosen to achieve fine lateral resolution, thus
allowing a detailed resolution of landslide-related structures. No
receiver array was employed, but the output from six closely
spaced geophones was summed at each station to enhance the
S/N ratio (Knapp and Steeples 1986a).
Given the superficial layer of chaotic and unconsolidated sed-
iments in the northern part of the profile and the agricultural ter-
rain of the central and southern part, small dynamite charges of
140 g were shot in shallow holes, at a depth of 3 m. This secured
good coupling and, at the same time, prevented high-frequency
loss; it also reduced the effect of surface waves (Miller et al.
1994). A limited environmental impact drilling unit (LIA) that
produced up to 70 holes/day was employed.
The source interval was 10 m on land and 5 or 10 m at sea; to
increase the coverage at sea, more than 300 shots were fired
along parallel routes set a few metres apart. A single-airgun con-
figuration was employed at a depth of 1.5 m with a GI capacity
of 0.66 l or 1.32 l. As will be seen below, the recorded airgun
amplitude spectra have a frequency-content higher than the spec-
tra of the explosive.
For the offshore shooting, we adopted a 152-active-channels
walk-through configuration; on the land this was shifted to a
symmetrical split, but towards profile termination, the walk-
through was re-adopted.
An average reflection coverage of 20 000% was reached at
sea, and 4000% on land. The presence of a few obstacles along
the profile (a steep slope, some houses, a small wood) con-
tributed to a local coverage drop (area C in Fig. 3a). The sample
interval and record length were 0.5 ms and 1 s, respectively.
SOURCE TESTS AND FIELD EXAMPLES
1 Land sources: The optimum type of energy source employed
for land shooting was the result of a trade-off between the need
for deep signal penetration and acceptable resolution at shallow
depth. Indeed, one of the major unknowns in the present survey
FIGURE 3
(a) The fold coverage; (b) the profile and the station distribution.
© 2005 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Near Surface Geophysics, 2005, 3, 235-243
Seismic land-marine acquisition survey 237
was the depth of the décollement surface, a very important fac-
tor in consolidation work but still unknown despite previous geo-
physical surveys. Thus we carried out various experiments at the
same source location using the same identical acquisition spread
but different source types: explosive sources with full (140 g)
and reduced charges in a 3 m borehole filled with gravel; gun-
shots with a bullet or a ball cartridge as moving object; and a
power weight drop (PWD) system with additional force provid-
ed by a rubber band.
To check for signal penetration depth and relative frequency
bandwidth, we used frequency–time (FT) analysis on 300 ms
sliding windows. Figures 4, 5 and 6, 7 show the first recorded
land shots and the corresponding FT analyses, respectively. The
data acquired using a full charge unit (Fig. 4) and 2/3 charge unit
(Fig. 5) were compared to determine whether reducing the
FIGURE 4
Full charge land-marine shot (140 g) used to test the source efficiency.
The charge was placed in a 3 m borehole filled with gravel; active chan-
nels were found at sea as well as on land. Note the mute traces correspon-
ding to the Flaminia road and Adriatic Railway. The channel distance is
5 m so that the total spread length is, in this case, approximately 760 m.
Display normalization is trace-by-trace.
FIGURE 5
Shot experiment at the same location and with the same spread as in
Fig. 4, but using 2/3 the full charge.
238 E. Stucchi, F. Zgur and L. Baradello
FIGURE 6
FT analysis of the full charge shot in Fig. 4. In all the FT displays the max-
imum is set at 0 dB and the colour scale is identical. At the yellow-green
transition (–15 dB), frequency components up to 100 Hz can be observed
between 100 and 220 ms. The bandwidth narrows to 40 Hz below 400 ms,
i.e. times corresponding to depths beyond the interest of this survey.
charge quantity could improve shot efficiency. We now discuss
the time-variant spectral displays, and the description of the dif-
ferent kinds of noise observed on these and other records are
considered in the following section. In Fig. 6, the signal band-
width ranges from 8 Hz to 100 Hz for up to 220 ms two-way
traveltime. Note the narrowing to 40 Hz around 400 ms, i.e. at
times considered deeper than the depth of the décollement sur-
face and thus of little interest for our survey. Between 100 and
200 ms some weaker contributions (green colour) at frequencies
higher than 100 Hz can also be appreciated. An analysis of the
2/3 explosive charge (Fig. 7) reveals less energy penetration
(with fewer frequencies at depth) compared to the full charge,
although some higher frequencies are recorded in the 80–180 ms
time window. Because of the need to investigate at depth, as well
FIGURE 8
Shot acquired using an Isotta Gun firing a bullet into the ground as ener-
gy source. The source location is the same as for Figs 4 and 5. Only the
land channels were activated. Very similar results were obtained using a
ball cartridge instead of the bullet.
© 2005 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Near Surface Geophysics, 2005, 3, 235-243
FIGURE 7
FT analysis of the reduced (2/3) charge shot (see Fig. 5). In this case there
is a weak frequency contribution above 100 Hz (green colour), but this is
at the expense of lower signal penetration. Below 200 ms, the yellow area
for the reduced blast is clearly less extended than for the full blast.
as the requirement for a detailed near-surface response, we
decided to blast the full charge instead of splitting the explosive
stick. This led to a loss in the higher-frequency contribution that,
according to Fig. 7, appeared to be weak (lower than –18 dB).
Responses of poorer quality were obtained with the other sources
tested, namely an Isotta Gun with a bullet or a ball cartridge (Fig.
8) and a PWD (Fig. 9). This is evident from the FT analyses
shown in Figs 10(a,b) and 11, respectively corresponding to the
rifle gather of Fig. 8, the land-acquired data of the full charge
shot of Fig. 4, and the PWD. For the rifle-shot (Fig. 10a), the
recorded maximum frequency was in the range 65–70 Hz, giving
a lower bandwidth than for the explosive blast (Fig. 10b). The
maximum frequency and bandwidth are difficult to define in the
noisier FT display of the PWD (Fig. 11). If we consider only the
FIGURE 9
Shot acquired using the PWD as energy source. The quality was mani-
festly lower than that of the other tested sources, and this discouraged the
use of the PWD in this survey.

FIGURE 10
(a) FT analysis of the shot shown in Fig. 8. The frequency content is
appreciable, up to 65–70 Hz (between 100 and 200 ms), but quickly
reduces below 300 ms. (b) FT analysis for the full charge shot in Fig. 4,
considering only the land-recorded data. Both (a) and (b) highlight the
greater efficiency of the explosive source.
time-domain analysis of the data, the choice of explosive or gun-
shot as the energy source could appear debatable. Indeed, both
types of gunshot performed well up to the estimated time of
interest (≈400 ms), had lower ground-roll energy than the explo-
sive and were, obviously, less expensive. However the outcome
of the FT analysis led us to abandon the clearly less-effective
PWD technique and carry out the whole acquisition using 140 g
of explosive charge in a 3 m borehole. Only a few gunshots were
recorded at locations where explosive blasts were not allowed, or
where the topography was too rough for the drilling equipment
to operate.
FIGURE 12
Example of marine-land record obtained with the GI gun of lower capac-
ity (0.66 l). The spread consisted of 48 hydrophones and approximately
100 geophones for a total length of ≈700 m. The different types of noise
are indicated: low-frequency/low-velocity noise (Scholte waves), the
bubble effect, and the electromagnetic noise (shown in the close-up).
Note its high lateral coherence.
© 2005 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Near Surface Geophysics, 2005, 3, 235-243
Seismic land-marine acquisition survey 239
FIGURE 11
FT analysis of the PWD record. The picture confirms the strong noise
contamination in this type of data. This source was not used further.
2 Marine sources: One 0.66 l airgun and one 1.32 l airgun were
used as marine energy sources. Figures 12, 13 and 14, 15 show
the recorded data and their FT analyses computed up to 1000 Hz
(see the next section for the noise description). From the FT
results it is evident that the airgun with greater capacity has
slightly deeper signal penetration, and the 0.66 l airgun data are
characterized by a higher noise content even if, theoretically,
such data would better depict very near-surface structures. Note
that the spectrum above 350 Hz, between 0 and 250 ms, is relat-
ed to the first arrivals at sea, to random noise and to coherent
noise on land, and thus contains no reflected energy. In fact for
FIGURE 13
An example of a marine-land record obtained with a spread configura-
tion identical to that of Fig.e 12 but using the 1.32 l GI gun. The same
noises as observed with the 0.66 l source are labelled. Note the higher
delay of the bubble effect (see also Figs 17 and 18).
240 E. Stucchi, F. Zgur and L. Baradello
FIGURE 14
FT analysis of the shot gather in Fig. 12. The frequency axis has been
extended up to the Nyquist frequency to show all the observed compo-
nents. The spectral components above 350 Hz between 0 and 250 ms are
related to marine first arrivals, to random noise and to the coherent high-
frequency noise on land (see also Figs 16 and 17).
both airguns, no reflected energy remains after the application of
the 300-350-800-1000 Hz high-pass filter, as can be observed in
the examples in Figs 16(a, b) (also compare with Figs 17 and
18). As the maximum useful frequency could not be determined
accurately for the 0.66 l and 1.32 l GI records during the field
operations, the acquisition was carried out with both sources.
Thus, it was possible to investigate the décollement surface effi-
ciently at different depths for a limited cost because all the equip-
ment was already on line.
A single airgun PAR BOLT 600 DH (operating at a pressure
FIGURE 16
(a) 0–300 ms close-up of the shot gather in Fig. 12 after 300-350-800-
1000 Hz high-pass filter application. Only residual first-break energy,
random noise and the high-frequency components of the electromagnet-
ic coherent noise are shown. (b) The same for the shot gather in Fig. 13.
© 2005 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Near Surface Geophysics, 2005, 3, 235-243
FIGURE 15
The FT analysis of the 1.32 l GI shot gather appears less noisy than that
of the smaller airgun (Fig. 14). The energy decay trend is less pronounced
at traveltimes greater than 300 ms, indicating a better depth signal pene-
tration. Also in this case, the recorded frequency components above
350 Hz are related to different types of noise (see also Figs 16 and 18)
of 140 bar) with no device for bubble reduction was used and
therefore the bubble effect had to be tackled during the process-
ing phase. The data were kept separate because of the different
wavelet properties and bubble delays. Figures 12 and 13 show
the repetition of the first breaks due to the bubble effect on the
marine and land data. Figures 17 and 18 are close-ups of the
26-38-200-350 Hz band-pass filtered data, allowing a more
accurate delay evaluation of approximately 70 and 90 ms for the
0.66 l and 1.32 l airguns, respectively. Note the shallow reflec-
FIGURE 17
Close-up of the shot gather in Fig. 12 after 26-38-200-350 Hz band-pass
filter application. Note the reflection hyperbolae with apexes in the up-
dip direction towards the sea, in agreement with available geological
information.

FIGURE 18
The same band-pass filter as described in Fig. 17 applied to the shot gath-
er of the 1.32 l GI gun (Fig. 13). Reflection hyperbolae are again very
well delineated. On the visible land traces (channels 58–80 of Figs 17
and 18) note the frequency components of the electromagnetic noise in
the signal bandwidth.
tion hyperbolae with apexes in the up-dip direction towards the
sea, in agreement with the geological knowledge of the area.
DISCUSSION ON THE RECORDED DATA
AND NOISE
Figures 4, 12, 13, 19 and 20 are examples of raw shot gathers
acquired with various spread configurations. It is evident that the
whole recorded data set consists of sub-datasets (marine-marine,
marine-land, land-marine and land-land) with signal properties
that are strongly dependent on the type of source and sensor used
in the data acquisition. Moreover each sub-dataset is affected by
a particular combination of noises that can originate from differ-
ent phenomena and/or human activity such as: surface-wave
propagation, electromagnetic interference, hardware configura-
tion (single airgun), harbour operations, railway and road traffic,
etc. A short description of the types of noise we found in the
recorded data is given here, so that geophysicists planning simi-
lar near-surface acquisitions can take advantage of our experi-
ence.
Ground roll (Figs 4, 19, 20) and the bubble effect (Figs 12 and
13) are very simple to identify. Note that in the marine-land con-
figuration, the bubble affects the whole airgun record, i.e. data
acquired both at sea as well as on land, and interferes with the
shallow reflections that were the most interesting in our survey.
Noise similar to ground roll, characterized by a low-frequen-
cy content, slow apparent velocity with dispersive behaviour and
high amplitudes, can be observed in the marine-marine data
(Figs 12 and 13). The location of the seismic source close to the
© 2005 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Near Surface Geophysics, 2005, 3, 235-243
Seismic land-marine acquisition survey 241
FIGURE 19
Example of land-marine shot gather. Note the ground roll and the guid-
ed waves on the land-recorded data. The shallow reflections at sea, indi-
cated by the red arrows, which asymptotically overlap the refracted
arrivals, are very interesting.
FIGURE 20
Example of land-land data acquired far from the sea. Guided waves,
ground roll and electromagnetic noise are very evident.
sea-bed leads to the generation of seismic waves with the above-
described characteristics (these are also called Scholte waves);
such waves travel along the sea-floor like surface waves in shal-
low land layers (Essen et al. 1998). However, unlike the land
case, a simple band-pass filter removes such waves effectively
(Figs 17 and 18).
In land-marine data acquisition, the hydrophones record
another type of coherent noise with well-defined apparent veloc-
ity (Figs 4, 5 and 19), indicating a noise source located far out to
sea. During the processing phase, the constant apparent velocity
of this noise can be exploited to eliminate it. For marine-marine
data, the observed types of noise have a much more random
behaviour and occurrence. Such noise is mainly due to harbour
activity, and sometimes the data were so strongly contaminated
that the whole shot had to be discarded.
Two more kinds of noise observed on land-recorded data
242 E. Stucchi, F. Zgur and L. Baradello
FIGURE 21
Constant-velocity stack (v=1750 m/s) obtained with the data of the 1.32 l
GI gun, and application of the 26-38-200-350 Hz band-pass filter and an
AGC (50 ms) before stack. True reflections (and probably some multi-
ples) delineate the subsurface structures at sea, despite the very simple
processing steps applied.
interfere destructively with the signals of interest. One, related
only to land shooting, is the reverberation due to guided waves
that follow the first arrivals. The reverberation lasts up to
150–200 ms, as can be seen in Figs 19 and 20 (Robertsson et al.
1996). This noise can overlap the shallow reflections and must
therefore be removed. Deconvolution deals with it successfully
because of repetitive wavelet features.
The second type of noise consists of horizontal time bands
with a duration ranging from 100 ms to more than 250 ms (Figs
12, 13, 19 and 20). The noise has high lateral coherence, as seen
in the close-up in Fig. 12, and the zero moveout suggests that
electromagnetic interference with the acquisition equipment is
its origin. Indeed, a cluster of high-power broadcasting antennae
are installed on the hill top behind Ancona (the Montagnolo dis-
trict), and these were considered responsible for this noise. High
frequencies seem to predominate (Fig. 12), but spectral analysis
shows that the noise spectrum also overlaps the signal band-
width, thus it is not easy to filter this noise out.
However, despite the high noise contamination, some shallow
reflections are visible, for example on the raw shot gathers of the
land-marine data (Fig. 19). The behaviour and consistency of
these reflections in the adjacent shots indicate that they are relat-
ed to the acoustic impedance contrasts of the layers at shallow
depths. Unfortunately, there could be problems in stacking these
reflections because of the mute due to the NMO stretching.
© 2005 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Near Surface Geophysics, 2005, 3, 235-243
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The campaign was carried out in March 2002 and took 15 work-
ing days overall: two days were needed for surveying, three days
for drilling 183 holes over a 1320 m profile, three days for
marine operations and seven days for land source testing and
production recording.
A total of approximately 74 000 traces was collected in 545
records; noise tests (in groups of 5–10) and shots that were
strongly noise-contaminated were labelled for easy rejection dur-
ing the processing.
The marine data collection was very efficient. In one after-
noon more than 335 shots were recorded using both airguns,
acquiring 14 lines perpendicular to the coast and closely aligned
to the OBC, and one shot-line parallel to the coast. Shot spacing
resulted in sea coverage of the order of 20 000%, and was con-
tributed to equally by both airguns (excluding the shots collect-
ed with the 1.32 l GI gun, parallel to the coastline). Figure 21
shows a constant velocity stack (CVS, v=1750 m/s) obtained by
band-pass filtering (26-38-200-350 Hz) the marine-marine data
of the 1.32 l airgun and applying a prestack 50 ms AGC.
Although only three very simple processing steps were used to
produce this image, the reflections depicting the syncline struc-
ture with its depocentre on land are well delineated.
Despite the higher cost of the land shots, their number was
kept as high as possible, providing medium fold coverage of
4000%. This resulted in a total of 210 blasts that could not be dis-
tributed uniformly because of the topography (the drill equip-
ment could not operate on the steep slopes and in the trenches),
the local buildings and a small wood.
In conclusion, despite the high noise of different kinds pres-
ent in the data, the test results carried out during acquisition
(CVS), the reflections observed on shot gathers with only a sim-
ple band-pass filter applied, and the high dynamics (24 dB) of
the recording equipment leave us confident that our future pro-
cessing and interpretation activities will lead to a more detailed
knowledge of the landslide, particularly of the landslide foot and
the maximum depth of the terrain involved.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The present work was carried out within the framework of the
following research projects: Monitoring Urban Subsidence,
Cavities, and Landslides, funded by the EU, and Geophysical
Study and Monitoring of Landslide Phenomena in the Ancona
Area, funded by the Ancona Municipality. We thank the Ancona
Municipality for its permission to publish these results, Prof. A.
Mazzotti for his supervision during the acquisition campaign and
the officers and technical staff of the City of Ancona for their
support throughout these projects. We also thank all those people
of the University of Milan and the Istituto Nazionale di
Oceanografia e Geofisica Sperimentale of Trieste who took part
in the acquisition operations. The Landmark Graphics
Corporation ProMAX software was used to analyse the data in
real time.
 Seismic land-marine acquisition survey 243

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© 2005 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Near Surface Geophysics, 2005, 3, 235-243
 244 E. Stucchi, F. Zgur and L. Baradello

© 2005 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Near Surface Geophysics, 2005, 3, 235-243

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