Italian Volcano Supersites

Volcanic eruptions are among the geohazards that may have a substantial economic and social impact, even at worldwide scale. Large populated regions are prone to volcanic hazards worldwide. Even local phenomena may affect largely populated areas and in some cases even megacities, producing severe economic losses. On a regional or global perspective, large volcanic eruptions may affect the climate for years with potentially huge economic impacts, but even relatively small eruptions may inject large amounts of volcanic ash in the atmosphere and severely affect air traffic over entire continents. One of main challenges of the volcanological community is to continuously monitor and understand the internal processes leading to an eruption, in order to give substantial contributions to the risk reduction. Italian active volcanoes constitute natural laboratories and ideal sites where to apply the cutting-edge volcano observation systems, implement new monitoring systems and to test and improve the most advanced models and methods for investigate the volcanic processes. That's because of the long tradition of volcanological studies resulting into long-term data sets, both in-situ and from satellite systems, among the most complete and accurate worldwide, and the large spectrum of the threatening volcanic phenomena producing high local/regional/continental risks. This contribution aims at presenting the compound monitoring systems operating on the Italian active volcanoes, the main improvements achieved during the recent studies direct toward volcanic hazard forecast and risk reductions and the guidelines for a wide coordinated project aimed at applying the ideas of the GEO Supersites Initiative at Mt. Etna and Campi Flegrei / Vesuvius areas.