Abstract Through Ireland's national seabed mapping programme, Integrated Mapping for the Sustainable Development of Ireland's Marine Resource (INFOMAR), the collaboration between Geological Survey Ireland and the Marine Institute continues to comprehensively map Ireland's marine territory in high resolution. Through its work, the programme builds on earlier Irish seabed mapping efforts, including the Irish National Seabed Survey project in producing seabed mapping products that support Ireland's blue economy, European marine policy and international efforts to understand our global oceans. INFOMAR uses a variety of marine technologies to deliver accurate bathymetric maps and useful data products to end users through a free and open source licensing agreement. To reflect the diversity of applications these data products serve, a series of four case studies are presented here focusing on marine geophysical and geological data from locations within Ireland's marine territories. The case studies illustrate how data generated through seabed mapping may be interpreted to directly impact the generation of blue knowledge across a variety of marine environments ranging from shallow coastal and shelf waters to the deep oceanic depths of the continental slope of Ireland's marine area. The impact of Ireland's seabed mapping efforts is further considered in the context of national, European and international initiatives where Ireland's marine knowledge resource is leveraged to deliver positive benefit to the programme's stakeholders.

Abstract Reliability is the greatest concern in recent karst vulnerability assessments. Checking the validity of results and understanding the operation of karst systems are therefore the most promising areas for improvement. We report an application of the Slovene Approach to a test site in the Gömör-Torna Karst of Hungary and Slovakia. The resource vulnerability map provided an appropriate result and showed that the overlying sediments and thicker soil may effectively decrease the vulnerability of this unconfined area. The source vulnerability of the Kis-Tohonya Spring was evaluated for the purposes of protection zoning. The results of long-term hydrograph and recession curve analyses were helpful in understanding the functioning of the Kis-Tohonya Spring and the karst system. The importance of the different regimes contributing to the slow and fast flow of the spring under different hydrological conditions was shown. Ongoing research aims to feed these results back into the source vulnerability assessment of the spring.

Abstract Knowledge of rheology can reduce damage caused by debris flows, providing a means to delineate hazard-prone areas and to estimate the dangerous effects of these phenomena. The application of numerical models of debris-flow propagation and deposition for hazard prediction requires detailed topographical, hydrological and rheological data, which are not always available. The large Rivoli Bianchi Fan on the Eastern Italian Alps is mainly built from sediment transported by debris flows along the Citate Torrent and its tributaries. We compared the results of numerical simulations performed with two different single-phase, non-Newtonian, two-dimensional models, FLO-2D and IDRA2D-DF, to test their reliability in simulating the behaviour of debris flows on alluvial fans. Data from field topographic surveys and from rain gauges were used as input for the boundary conditions, referring to the Rivoli Bianchi Fan as an example location. The commercial FLO-2D model creates a more accurate representation of the hazard-prone zone in terms of flooded area, but the results in terms of runout distances and deposit thickness are similar to those obtained through the open-source IDRA2D-DF. Parameters obtained through back analysis with both models can be cautiously applied to predict hazard in areas of similar geology, morphology and climate.

Groundwater levels were offset in bedrock observation wells, measured by the U.S. Geological Survey or others, as far as 553 km from the M w 5.8 Mineral, Virginia (USA), earthquake on 23 August 2011. Water levels dropped as much as 0.47 m in 34 wells and rose as much as 0.15 m in 12 others. In some wells, which are as much as 213 m deep, the water levels recovered from these deviations in hours to days, but in others the water-level offset may have persisted. The groundwater-level offsets occurred in locations where the earthquake was at least weakly felt, and the maximum water-level excursion increased with felt intensity, independent of epicentral distance. Coseismic static strain from the earthquake was too small and localized to have contributed significantly to the groundwater-level offsets. The relation with intensity is consistent with ground motion from seismic waves leading to the water-level offsets. Examination of the hydrographs indicates that short-period ground motion most likely affected the permeability of the bedrock aquifers monitored by the wells.