ALKOR AL532

Mount Etna’s southeastern flank, heavily populated and a famous tourist destination, slides into the Ionian Sea at rates of 3-5 cm per year
as evidenced in GPS and InSAR data. Offshore, an acoustic telemetry network has been measuring displacement of the unstable flank at one location since 2016 and has revealed similar rates of movement. The network recorded ~4 cm of slip during an eight day sliding event in May 2017, which is also the first time to monitor a submarine strike-slip event. We propose to extend this geodetic point measurement to a wider area by tracing the active fault’s expression on the seafloor in AUV multibeam bathymetry and sidescan data as well as by optical mapping. During the proposed cruise the geodetic stations will be exchanged to allow for continuation of long-term monitoring of offshore flank dynamics.