Inside The Glaciers Project: Laser Scanning Of The Grotta Del Gelo (Mount Etna, Italy)

As part of activities of the “Inside the Glaciers” project, managed by an Italian team of speleologists and geologists with the purpose of studying several ice-caves in Europe and South America, a research campaign was recently carried out in Mount Etna (Sicily, Italy). This volcano is the highest active in Europe and hosts more than 200 caves including Grotta del Gelo (Ice Cave) which is located on the Northern flank of Mount Etna at an altitude of about 2040 m a.s.l. This cave was formed during the Etna’s long and most destructive eruption dated from 1614 to 1624 and is one of the most famous because it hosts a small glacier, maybe the southernmost of the Northern hemisphere. Aim of this project was to realize a detailed survey of Grotta del Gelo using a Leica HDS 7000 terrestrial laser scanner in order to acquire precise data measurements of the ice deposits. This survey was the first step of a monitoring project that will be developed in the next years in collaboration with the Etna Regional Park, the Sicilian Regional Speleological Federation and the Centro Speleologico Etneo of Catania which by many years are involved in the topographic monitoring of this particular cave. The proposed article introduces the methods used for this first laser scanning survey campaign of Grotta del Gelo and the results obtained.