Geology and history days

This volume collects some contributions presented in the first four study days, with homonymous title, which took place between 2019 and 2020, at the Italian Geographic Society. These study days, each with a specific theme, were proposed to the public to take stock of the current state of knowledge regarding the importance of historical and cartographic sources for the study of geological phenomena and natural catastrophic events. The main themes addressed in the first four scheduled days were the following:

• natural hazards, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, sinkholes, floods, historical and cartographic sources and popular legends;
• disappeared lakes of Italy, sinkholes, sacred and mineralized springs, extinct thermal areas;
• underground cavities hidden or disappeared under the urban fabric and ancient mapping;
• seismically-induced ground effects such as landslides, sinkholes, soil liquefaction, creation of lakes, damming of riverbeds, landscape modifications in general and historical research;
• the evolution of the cartographic representation of the territory and the information it hides, landscape variations and geo-morphological processes.

In recent years an increasing number of scholars from the Earth Science disciplines are interfacing with historical and archaeological studies to examine a given geological problem from a broader point of view. From this has emerged the need to open a new strand of study in which history and geology come together to better understand the dynamics of the land.