Mariacristina Prampolini

1 INTRODUCTION During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the sea level was about 120–130 m lower than today, and most of the tectonically stable shelves were emergent. In particular, the Malta Plateau, a shallow carbonate platform in the Sicily Channel stretching from southern Sicily to the coasts of Malta, was also emergent.

Introduction The diversity and ecological significance of the deep ocean are a growing areas of interest in scientific research, not only for improving the understanding on the planet’s biodiversity and functioning but also for sustainable resource management, conservation efforts, and for addressing global challenges like climate change and ocean health (Mengerink et al., 2014; Thurber et al., 2014; Ramirez-Llodra, 2020).

1 Introduction Digital elevation models (DEM) are crucial in the assessment of natural hazards such as flooding and landslides, as they often provide the only comprehensive information available. While satellites deliver remote sensing information of the land surface of up to 2m resolution on non-polar terrestrial regions of the Earth (i.e. EarthDEM, Porter et al. (2022), only 25% of the seafloor is mapped with a minimum resolution of 400m (National Oceanographic Centre, 2023).