Radford University geologist’s Fulbright research contributing to knowledge of earthquake hazards in Italy

Ryan Sincavage may be the envy of his peers when they learn he spent the spring of 2025 in the sunbaked region of Calabria in southwest Italy.

“It’s such a great place,” he recalled. “The culture is amazing, and the food is the best in the world.

“And it’s such a wonderful place to work.”

Work?

Five months in Calabria sounds like an amazing vacation, but as much as he enjoyed the beaches, hiking the Dolomites and occasional evening walks eating gelato, Sincavage was in Italy’s rugged mountain region continuing his ongoing research. He spent most of his days there pushing – sometimes hammering – PVC pipes into random rocky cliffsides.

“There's a lot of interesting tectonic things going on there,” the associate professor of geology said of Calabria. Indeed, Italy is a fascinating part of the world, particularly when it comes to its geological features. For one, the country has a long history of volcanoes, Sincavage explained, from Etna to Vesuvius. 

And, for centuries, the Calabria region has experienced earthquakes, some of which have shattered the livelihood of people in the region.

Sincavage’s work in Calabria involved collecting sediment samples from marine terraces at various elevations to determine how quickly the specific region was experiencing uplift. And, if so, was it steady or unsteady?

“It all contributes to the overall knowledge of potential earthquake hazards,” Sincavage explained. 

The area where Sincavage conducted his research used to be a coastline, but through the movement of plate tectonics, the area has been lifted “up and up” over millions of years, he said.

“There are maps of these marine terraces that almost look like stair steps going up from the coast up to whatever elevation of the oldest one is,” Sincavage explained. “So, the older it is, the longer time it's had to get pushed upwards.” The terrain stays relatively flat most of the way up as the earthen materials just get pushed higher. More specifically, the land surface rises up as a response to the tectonic plates colliding with each other.

During his work in Calabria, Sincavage used the same expert geological techniques he teaches his students at Radford to collect sediments from terrace deposits to determine when they were deposited.  

Sincavage collected samples in the pipes, about 40 centimeters long, that he hammered into the earth. Once sediment filled the PVC pipe, the geologist removed it from the ground.

“When you do this, you’re pulling out sediments that were one time exposed to sunlight at the surface and then were buried,” he said. “When they were buried, they began accumulating a charge.”

Exposing the sediments once again to sunlight – or any light – would mean the charges would be released. Therefore, it was important that Sincavage covered both ends of the pipe almost immediately so as not to expose the samples to light.

“Energy from the sun can excite the crystals and allow them to expand, which allows the charges to escape,” Sincavage said, explaining the science behind the process. “If the samples are cut off from light, that doesn’t happen.”

Everything in the middle of the pipe was safe, he said.

“So, if we sample something that's been buried for a while and take it to a dark room, just like a photography lab, and then stimulate it with pulses of light, we can measure how much of that energy is released,” the geologist said, “and we could say, OK, this thing's been buried for X amount of time.”

In his research, Sincavage examines the rate of uplift for each terrace and calculates if there has been a steady rise. 

“We look at the style of uplift to determine if a place has had rapid uplifts for periods of time and then nothing, rapid again and then nothing for a while,” he said. “If that’s the case, if nothing has been uplifted and we know plates are interacting, stress is going to build.”

If strain increases for a while, “that’s how you get a potentially devastating earthquake.”

And with earthquakes, tsunamis are a significant concern, too.

Sincavage’s research is still in progress. He has sent many of the samples to labs in Colorado and Texas for analysis. In addition, some of the students he teaches in the Elevate Research program at Radford have been working on their own projects with he samples he collected in Calabria and on previous research excursions in India. 

Among the many gratifying components of Sincavage’s work in Calabria was being awarded a Fulbright fellowship to assist with the work. The geologist is one of 19 Radford University faculty members to receive the prestigious Fulbright honor.

“It was one of the biggest honors I’ve ever received,” he said, sitting in his Reed Hall office. “It’s a unique change to be recognized as an international scholar in a place where I have family and where my grandmother was born.”

That’s another reason the research in Calabria is so important to Sincavage: Family.

He has cousins who live in the area and still own the house where his grandmother, on his mother’s side, lived in Calabria before emigrating to the United States at age 17.

Sincavage’s research brought together everything, all in one place, that he has been building throughout his 30-year career. 

“It’s really rewarding that I get to contribute something beneficial to society and help us all understand earthquake and tsunami hazards better,” the geologist said. “It would be a huge honor to say I was able to do that in a place where I have a personal connection, a place where I have family.”

 

About Ryan Sincavage

Ryan Sincavage is an associate professor of geology. His research focuses on sedimentary geology, particularly regarding how river systems respond to changes in climate and tectonics. Much of this research is international in scope, with focus areas in Southeast Asia and South America. Sincavage is also the associate director of West Virginia Programming at the National Youth Science Academy in Davis, West Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in Earth science and environmental engineering from Vanderbilt University, an M.S. in geology from the University of Colorado-Boulder and a B.S. in Earth sciences from Pennsylvania State University.

Expertise: Geology, particularly regarding how river systems respond to changes in climate and tectonics.

Email: rsincavage@radford.edu