Microseismicity and Acoustic Emission for Landslide Monitoring (North-East Italy)

In the North-East Italy, along the left side of the Tagliamento River, the area around an old road tunnel, named Passo della Morte, is involved in a Deep Seated Gravitational Slope Deformation. The most active blocks move up to 5 cm/year. The western part is moreover characterized by sub-vertical limestone layers and a dense system of discontinuities and fractures which create ideal conditions for rapid rock slope failure. High risk is represented by the interference with a national road and the Tagliamento River. A microseismicity and acoustic emission monitoring system was designed to monitor signals generated by rock slope deformation, in order to obtain informations about the rock slide mechanism, to recognize precursory phenomena or to provide precursory patterns. It is composed by a seismometer and a piezoelectric transducer. The amount of microseisms and acoustic emission detected by these instruments was analyzed and a close relation between them was found. The influence of precipitations in the rock mass deformation was evaluated and an evident correlation between precipitation and microseisms/acoustic emission was found. . © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.