Geomorphological Hazards Affecting Main Productive Areas in the Mountain Basin of the Panaro River (Modena Apennines, Italy): a Case Study

This paper preliminarily illustrates a research, which takes into account the study of geomorphological hazards (i.e. landslides and fluvial processes) in the mountain-basin’s areas of the Panaro River which host productive activities. The article describes the methodology used to study and map geomorphological hazards in 16 productive areas: bibliographical and historical research, interviews with local inhabitants, analysis of the most recent cartographic documents, such as the Instability Inventory Map of the Modena Province (IIM) and of time series of aerial photographs/satellite images, field survey and GIS spatial analyses. The application of this methodology has given a precise and detailed framework of the past and current state of activity and spatial evolution of instability processes in the study area.Some practical remarks are given concerning the state of activity of processes and the mapping problems encountered due to the oldness of the topographic base maps.The case study of the Ceramiche Serra tile-factory is presented as an example of the application of the methodology.In general, differences have been detected between the instability framework identified in this work and that depicted by the official documents for territorial planning of the Modena Province (IIM). This highlights the need for a detailed geomorphological mapping (like the one proposed in this article) in order to produce documents which have a strong binding in territorial-planning issues.