International Workshop on High Energy Earth Sciences - Muon and Neutrino Radiography, Tokyo, Japan, 26–27 June, 2008
M. Vassallo, A. Zollo, G. Festa, C. Satriano, L. D’Auria, P. Gasparini, and P. Strolin
Mt. Vesuvius is a strato volcano near a densely populated area and only a few km outheast of Campi Flegrei, the active calderas on which the city of Napoli has been built.
It is composed of a volcanic cone (Gran Cono) that was built within a summit caldera (Mount Somma). The Somma-Vesuvius complex has formed over the last 25,000 years by means of a sequence of eruptions of variable explosiveness, ranging from the quiet lava outpourings that characterized much of the latest activity (for example, from 1881 to 1899 and from 1926 to 1930) to the explosive Plinian eruptions, including the one that destroyed Pompeii and killed thousands of people in 79 A.D. It experienced at least three violent explosive eruptions in historical times (79, 472, and 1631 A.D.). More frequent, less explosive eruptions have occurred from 1631 to 1944. Mt. Vesuvius is presently in a quiescent state, characterized by low-temperature fumaroles (less than 100°C) and moderate seismic activity (about 100 earthquakes per year with magnitudes between 0.5 and 3.6), and it is difficult to predict when it may erupt explosively again.
In the last 50/60 years the municipalities located on the slope of the volcano have had an uncontrolled expansion. Actually about 700,000 people live along the volcano’s flank, within a 15 km radius from the central crater. This has transformed Mt. Vesuvius surroundings into one of the areas with the highest volcanic risk in the word. As a consequence the volcano has been the object of