Coastal flood vulnerability assessment with geomatic methods: Test sites of western Thailand, Sydney (Australia) and aeolian islands (south tyrrhenian sea, Italy)

The work undertaken in this PhD thesis is aimed at the development and testing of an innovative methodology for the assessment of the vulnerability of coastal areas to marine catastrophic inundation (tsunami). Different approaches are used at different spatial scales and are applied to three different study areas: 1. The entire western coast of Thailand 2. Two selected coastal suburbs of Sydney – Australia 3. The Aeolian Islands, in the South Tyrrhenian Sea – Italy I have discussed each of these cases study in at least one scientific paper: one paper about the Thailand case study (Dall’Osso et al., in review-b), three papers about the Sydney applications (Dall’Osso et al., 2009a; Dall’Osso et al., 2009b; Dall’Osso and Dominey-Howes, in review) and one last paper about the work at the Aeolian Islands (Dall’Osso et al., in review-a). These publications represent the core of the present PhD thesis. The main topics dealt with are outlined and discussed in a general introduction while the overall conclusions are outlined in the last section.

Functional and Genetic characterization of new genomic islands from an E. coli strain associated with neonatal meningitis.

Enterobacteriaceae genomes evolve through mutations, rearrangements and horizontal gene transfer (HGT). The latter evolutionary pathway works through the acquisition DNA (GEI) modules of foreign origin that enhances fitness of the host to a given environment. The genome of E. coli IHE3034, a strain isolated from a case of neonatal meningitis, has recently been sequenced and its subsequent sequence analysis has predicted 18 possible GEIs, of which: 8 have not been previously described, 5 fully meet the pathogenic island definition and at least 10 that seem to be of prophagic origin. In order to study the GEI distribution of our reference strain, we screened for the presence 18 GEIs a panel of 132 strains, representative of E. coli diversity. Also, using an inverse nested PCR approach we identified 9 GEI that can form an extrachromosomal circular intermediate (CI) and their respective attachment sites (att). Further, we set up a qPCR approach that allowed us to determine the excision rates of 5 genomic islands in different growth conditions. Four islands, specific for strains appertaining to the sequence type complex 95 (STC95), have been deleted in order to assess their function in a Dictyostelium discoideum grazing assays. Overall, the distribution data presented here indicate that 16 IHE3034 GEIs are more associated to the STC95 strains. Also the functional and genetic characterization has uncovered that GEI 13, 17 and 19 are involved in the resistance to phagocitation by Dictyostelium d thus suggesting a possible role in the adaptation of the pathogen during certain stages of infection.

Transform Tectonics and Non-Volcanic Oceanic Islands

Oceanic islands can be divided, according to their origin, in volcanic and tectonic. Volcanic islands are due to excess volcanism. Tectonic islands are mainly formed due to vertical tectonic motions of blocks of oceanic lithosphere along transverse ridges flanking transform faults at slow and ultraslow mid-ocean ridges. Vertical tectonic motions are due to a reorganization of the geometry of the transform plate boundary, with the transition from a transcurrent tectonics to a transtensive and/or transpressive tectonics, with the formation of the transverse ridges. Tectonic islands can be located also at the ridge–transform intersection: in this case the uplift is due by the movement of the long-lived detachment faults located along the flanks of the mid-ocean ridges. The "Vema" paleoisland (equatorial Atlantic) is at the summit of the southern transverse ridge of the Vema transform. It is now 450 m bsl and it is capped by a carbonate platform 500 m-thick, dated by 87Sr/86Sr at 10 Ma. Three tectonic paleoislands are on the summit of the transverse ridge flanking the Romanche megatrasform (equatorial Atlantic). They are now about 1,000 m bsl and they are formed by 300 m-thick carbonate platforms dated by 87Sr/86Sr, between 11 and 6 Ma. The tectonic paleoisland “Atlantis Bank" is located in the South-Western Indian Ridge, along the Atlantis II transform, and it is today 700 m bsl. The only modern example of oceanic tectonics island is the St. Paul Rocks (equatorial Atlantic), located along the St. Paul transform. This archipelago is the top of a peridotitic massif that it is now a left overstep undergoing transpression. Oceanic volcanic islands are characterized by rapid growth and subsequent thermal subsidence and drowning; in contrast, oceanic tectonic islands may have one or more stages of emersion related to vertical tectonic events along the large oceanic fracture zones.