Monitoring station of soil slips in a representative area of Calabria (Italy)

Shallow instabilities, known in literature as soil slips, although they affect small volumes of soil, can often produce high risk conditions, in particular for infrastructure networks. The reasons are many and, among these, there are the high rate of the instabilities when evolve to flow and their low spatial forecast. These features have suggested the realization of a cognitive monitoring station in a study area (Calabria, Southern Italy) in order to measure some parameters correlated to soil slips predisposition, triggering and evolution. These measures, and in particular suction measures, taken since October 2001 allow to formulate hypothesis on the saturation-desaturation processes, and mechanisms of perched water tables formation in the degraded soils cover, that control predisposition, triggering and evolution of soil slips phenomena.