Castelfrentano Landslide, Abruzzo, Central Italy

We report the results on the study of a great mass movement that is taking place in the area located South West of Castelfrentano in Abruzzo Region (Italy) in the Adriatic forehand. The movement has transformed the town-planning, reducing the ancient historical perimeter and caused damages to houses and infrastructures. In particular, we find later regression deposits of the Plio-Pleistocene sequence. In the investigated area morphology is characterised by hills and valleys and by a weak relief energy and several terraces are present. Although a preliminary analysis would suggest a regional base level variation to originate these terraces, the non correspondence with terraces of nearest drainage basins indicates that these terraces are landslide shapes. At the end they show that the mass movements involve in depth the studied slope. In fact, the research and monitoring results have showed that the movement is slow, deep and the underlying clays have been involved. The general behaviour of the slope has been analysed by a finite difference elements code (FLAC) to simulate the non linearity and the time dependence of the sod.