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Landslide Monitoring at the Cala Rossa Sea
Cliff (Favignana Island, Sicily)

L. Falconi, R. Iannucci, S. Martino, A. Paciello, A. Screpanti,
and V. Verrubbi

Abstract
Favignana Island (Sicily, Italy) is a historical and environmental attraction site frequented
by tourists especially during the long warm season of the year. Over several centuries the
sea cliffs constituted by calcareous sandstone cropping out in the east side of the island
have been exploited for the production of building stone. Currently, the quarries used for
the rock extraction as well as the natural cliffs are undergoing extensive erosional and
gravitational processes. Besides putting at risk the safety of the people attending the area,
the widespread rock falls are likely to threaten sites of great historical and anthropological
value that, once destroyed, can no longer be reconstructed. The rock mass quality
assessment and slope displacement monitoring of cliffs were carried on to identify the most
unstable areas providing a support to the local authorities in the implementation of effective
and sustainable mitigation measures. If adequate measures will be taken in future, operators
and users of the tourist circuit will have the opportunity to enjoy these amazing sites with a
reduced risk.

Keywords
Cliff Monitoring Hazard Favignana Island Sicily

L. Falconi (&) A. Paciello A. Screpanti Introduction
ENEA, Casaccia Research Centre,
Via Anguillarese 300, 00123 Rome, Italy
e-mail: luca.falconi@enea.it The eastern side of Favignana Island (western Sicily, Italy)
offers some stretches of extremely beautiful coast, where it is
A. Paciello
e-mail: antonella.paciello@enea.it possible to appreciate the remains of one of the traditional
productive activities of the island: the “pirrere”. These are
A. Screpanti
e-mail: augusto.screpanti@enea.it open and underground quarries where a calcareous sandstone
was extracted to be used as building stone. The open air
R. Iannucci S. Martino
Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra & Centro di Ricerca quarries are located both in the interior of the island, forming
per i Rischi Geologici (CERI), “Sapienza” Università di Roma, deep pits, or along the cliffs overlooking the sea, while the
Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
underground ones form a branched network of caves and
e-mail: roberto.iannucci@uniroma1.it
tunnels.
S. Martino The high resistance brought the biocalcarenite, improperly
e-mail: salvatore.martino@uniroma1.it
called “tuff”, to be extracted in several hypogeal and open air
V. Verrubbi quarries and used as building stone. The exploitation of the
ENEA, Frascati Research Centre, Via Enrico Fermi 45, 00044
Frascati, Italy Favignana sandstone is ancient, surely since the roman age,
e-mail: vladimiro.verrubbi@enea.it but it reached its maximum development mainly between
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 123
M. Mikoš et al. (eds.), Advancing Culture of Living with Landslides,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53498-5_15