The Research Institute for Hydrogeological Protection of the CNR and the Department of Physics and Geology of the University of Perugia have created a new lithological map of Italy, reclassifying the data of the National Geological Map. Lithology studies the composition and physical properties of rocks, which are aspects of fundamental importance in the analysis of the earth's surface and subsoil, because they are applied in multiple areas, such as the research concerning the evolutionary dynamics of the landscape, the chemical analysis of surface waters and the quality of groundwater, the phenomena of seismic amplification, but also for the identification of potentially exploitable fossil fuel deposits. "Its realization – explain the CNR scholars - has involved a detailed knowledge of the territory and a great ability to manage the geospatial data of reference. We have devised an expert multi-scale and multilevel procedure, able to combine the more than five thousand entries describing the different geological formations - stored in a database - into 19 lithological units differentiated according to the expected geomechanical behavior of the materials. The result was a 1:100,000 scale map that preserves the detail of the source data, and that provides new reclassifications useful for the study of particular properties of the emerging rocks".
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