We present the first high-quality catalog of early aftershocks of the three mainshocks of the 2016 central Italy Amatrice-Visso-Norcia normal faulting sequence. We located 10,574 manually picked ...aftershocks with a robust probabilistic, non-linear method achieving a significant improvement in the solution accuracy and magnitude completeness with respect to previous studies. Aftershock distribution and relocated mainshocks give insight into the complex architecture of major causative and subsidiary faults, thus providing crucial constraints on multi-segment rupture models. We document reactivation and kinematic inversion of a WNW-dipping listric structure, referable to the inherited Mts Sibillini Thrust (MST) that controlled segmentation of the causative normal faults. Spatial partitioning of aftershocks evidences that the MST lateral ramp had a dual control on rupture propagation, behaving as a barrier for the Amatrice and Visso mainshocks, and later as an asperity for the Norcia mainshock. We hypothesize that the Visso mainshock re-activated also the deep part of an optimally oriented preexisting thrust. Aftershock patterns reveal that the Amatrice Mw5.4 aftershock and the Norcia mainshock ruptured two distinct antithetic faults 3-4 km apart. Therefore, our results suggest to consider both the MST cross structure and the subsidiary antithetic fault in the finite-fault source modelling of the Norcia earthquake.
Starting from late May 2012, the Emilia region (Northern Italy) was severely shaken by an intense seismic sequence, originated from a ML 5.9 earthquake on May 20th, at a hypocentral depth of 6.3km, ...with thrust-type focal mechanism. In the following days, the seismic rate remained high, counting 50 ML≥2.0 earthquakes a day, on average. Seismicity spreads along a 30km east–west elongated area, in the Po river alluvial plain, in the nearby of the cities Ferrara and Modena. Nine days after the first shock, another destructive thrust-type earthquake (ML 5.8) hit the area to the west, causing further damage and fatalities. Aftershocks following this second destructive event extended along the same east-westerly trend for further 20km to the west, thus illuminating an area of about 50km in length, on the whole. After the first shock struck, on May 20th, a dense network of temporary seismic stations, in addition to the permanent ones, was deployed in the meizoseismal area, leading to a sensible improvement of the earthquake monitoring capability there. A combined dataset, including three-component seismic waveforms recorded by both permanent and temporary stations, has been analyzed in order to obtain an appropriate 1-D velocity model for earthquake location in the study area. Here we describe the main seismological characteristics of this seismic sequence and, relying on refined earthquakes location, we make inferences on the geometry of the thrust system responsible for the two strongest shocks.
•First complete analysis of the 2012 Emilia mainshocks–aftershocks seismic sequence.•New catalog of the seismic sequence including data from temporary stations•Sensible improvement in terms of the activated fault system geometry definition•The different dip of the activated fault segments is highlighted and discussed.•Basic information are provided for further specific studies and hazard scenarios.
The mechanism by which faults interact each other is still a debated matter. One of the main issues is the role of pore-pressure diffusion in the delayed triggering of successive events. The 2016 ...Amatrice–Visso–Norcia seismic sequence (Central Apennines, Italy) provides a suitable dataset to test different physical mechanisms leading to delayed events. The sequence started on August 24, 2016, with the Amatrice mainshock (MW = 6), and was followed after more than 60 days by events in Visso (MW = 5.4) and Norcia (MW = 5.9). We analyzed the contribution of the static stress change and the role of fluids in the delayed triggering. Through 3D poroelastic modeling, we show that the Amatrice mainshock induced a pore-pressure diffusion and a normal stress reduction in the hypocentral area of the two aftershocks, favoring the rupture. Our parametric study employs a simple two-layered conductivity model with anisotropy in the seismogenic layer, characterized by larger conductivity values (K > 10–5 m/s) along the NNW-SSE direction. The one-way coupled pore-pressure 3-D diffusion modeling predicts the maximum increase of the pore pressure at the location of the two Visso earthquakes 60 days after the mainshock. The occurrence of anisotropic diffusivity is supported by the pattern of active faults and the strong crustal anisotropy documented by S-wave splitting analysis. We conclude that the temporal evolution of the sequence was controlled by the anisotropic diffusion of pore-pressure perturbations through pre-existing NNW-trending fracture systems.
In this work, an approach is developed to study the seismicity associated with the impoundment and level changes of a water reservoir (reservoir induced seismicity – RIS). The proposed methodology ...features a combination of a semi-analytical poroelastic model with an earthquake nucleation approach based on rate-and-state frictional law. The combined approach was applied to the case of the Pertusillo Lake, located in the Val d’Agri area (Italy), whose large seasonal water level changes are believed to induce protracted micro-seismicity (local magnitude ML < 3). Results show that the lake impoundment in 1962 could have produced up to 0.5 bar (1 bar = 100 kPa) changes in Coulomb failure stress (ΔCFS), while the seasonal water level variation is responsible for variation up to 0.05 bar. Modeling results of the seismicity rates in 2001−2014 show that the observed earthquakes are well correlated with the modeled ΔCFS. Finally, the reason that the seismicity is only observed at southwest of the Pertusillo Lake is provided, which is likely attributed to different rock lithologies and depletion caused by significant hydrocarbon exploitation in the northeastern sector of the lake.
We study the crustal velocity changes occurred at the restart of produced water injection at a well in the Val d'Agri oil field in January–February 2015 using seismic noise cross-correlation ...analysis. We observe that the relative velocity variations fit well with the hydrometric level of the nearby Agri river, which may be interpreted as a proxy of the total water storage in the shallow aquifers of the Val d'Agri valley. We then remove from the relative velocity trend the contribution of hydrological variations and observe a decrease in relative velocity of ≈ 0.08% starting seven days after the injection restart. In order to investigate if this decreasing could be due to the water injection restart, we compute the medium diffusivity from its delay time and average station-well distance. We found diffusivity values in the range 1–5 m
2
/s, compatible with the observed delay time of the small-magnitude (
M
L
≤ 1.8) induced seismicity occurrences, triggered by the first injection tests in June 2006 and with the hydraulic properties of the hydrocarbon reservoir. Our results show that water storage variations can not be neglected in noise-based monitoring, and they can hide the smaller effects due to produced water injection.
•Accurate 3D locations of the Emilia 2012 seismic sequence in Italy.•Geometry of thrust system buried beneath the Quaternary sediments of the Po Valley.•The different dip of the thrusts, steep or ...flat, led to the arc-like shape of the front.•Heterogeneity of the basement drives the structuration of the front.
The evolution of the Apennines thrust-and-fold belt is related to heterogeneous process of subduction and continental delamination that generates extension within the mountain range and compression on the outer front of the Adria lithosphere. While normal faulting earthquakes diffusely occur along the mountain chain, the sparse and poor seismicity in the compressional front does not permit to resolve the ambiguity that still exists about which structure accommodates the few mm/yr of convergence observed by geodetic data. In this study, we illustrate the 2012 Emilia seismic sequence that is the most significant series of moderate-to-large earthquakes developed during the past decades on the compressional front of the Apennines. Accurately located aftershocks, along with P-wave and Vp/Vs tomographic models, clearly reveal the geometry of the thrust system, buried beneath the Quaternary sediments of the Po Valley. The seismic sequence ruptured two distinct adjacent thrust faults, whose different dip, steep or flat, accounts for the development of the arc-like shape of the compressional front. The first shock of May 20 (Mw 6.0) developed on the middle Ferrara thrust that has a southward dip of about 30°. The second shock of May 29 (Mw 5.8) ruptured the Mirandola thrust that we define as a steep dipping (50–60°) pre-existing (Permo-Triassic) basement normal fault inverted during compression. The overall geometry of the fault system is controlled by heterogeneity of the basement inherited from the older extension. We also observe that the rupture directivity during the two main-shocks and the aftershocks concentration correlate with low Poisson ratio volumes, probably indicating that portions of the fault have experienced intense micro-damage.
A list of 100 focal mechanism solutions that occurred in Italy between 2015 and 2019 has been compiled for earthquakes with magnitude
M
≥ 4.0. We define earthquake parameters for additional 22 ...seismic events with 3.0 ≤
M
< 4.0 for two specific key zones: Muccia, at the northern termination of the Amatrice–Visso–Norcia 2016–2018 central Italy seismic sequence, and Montecilfone (southern Italy) struck in 2018 by a deep, strike-slip Mw 5.1 earthquake apparently anomalous for the southern Apennines extensional belt. First-motion focal mechanism solutions are a good proxy for the initial rupture and they provide important additional information on the source mechanism. The catalog compiled in the present paper provides earthquake parameters for individual events of interest to contribute, as a valuable source of information, for further studies as seismotectonic investigations and stress distribution maps. We calculated the focal mechanisms using as a reference the phase pickings reported in the Italian Seismic Bulletin (BSI). We visually checked the reference picks to accurately revise manual first-motion polarities, or include new onsets when they are not present in the BSI dataset, for the selected earthquakes within the whole Italian region, with a separate focus on the Amatrice–Visso–Norcia seismic sequence area from August 24, 2016 to August 24, 2018. For the Montecilfone area, we combined the information on the geometry and kinematics of the source of the 2018 Mw 5.1 event obtained in this study with available subsurface and structural data on the Outer Apulia Carbonate Platform to improve understanding of this intriguing strike-slip sequence. Our analysis suggests that the Montecilfone earthquake ruptured a W–E trending strike-slip dextral fault. This structure is confined within the Apulia crystalline crust and it might represent the western prolongation of the Mattinata Fault–Apricena Fault active and seismogenic structures. The calculated focal mechanisms of the entire catalog are of good quality complementing important details on source mechanics from moment tensors and confirming the relevance of systematically including manually revised and more accurate polarity data within the BSI database.
The Val d'Agri basin in the Apennines seismic belt hosts the largest oil field in onshore Europe. High‐quality recordings from a temporary dense network unravel a swarm of 111 small‐magnitude events ...(ML ≤ 1.8) occurred in June 2006 during the first stage of wastewater injection into a high‐rate well. High‐precision relative locations define a preexisting blind fault located 1 km below the well inside fractured and saturated carbonates where wastewater is reinjected. Seismicity begins 3 h after the initiation of injection. The seismicity rate strictly correlates with injection curves and temporal variations of elastic and anisotropic parameters. Seismicity is induced by rapid communication of pore pressure perturbations along a high‐permeability fault zone favorably oriented with respect to the local extensional stress field. Our accurate 3‐D locations of 219 events (ML ≤ 2.2) detected by the local operator network after June 2006 concentrate on the preexisting fault measuring 5 km along dip. Over the following 7.5 years, the seismicity rate correlates with short‐term increases in injection pressure.
Key Points
Space‐time‐energy distribution of seismic swarms close to an injection well
Fast response of the seismicity rate to changes in the injection parameters
Rapid migration of seismicity along a preexisting optimally oriented fault
We present the first seismic reflection images of the Paganica and Bazzano basins, two tectonic basins developed in the hanging wall of the Paganica‐San Demetrio Fault System, the causative fault of ...the 2009 Mw 6.1 L'Aquila earthquake, Italy. Five high‐resolution seismic profiles were acquired along a main, 7 km long transect cutting across the strands of an active fault system in urbanized areas with widespread sources of seismic noise. Three processing approaches were chosen to tackle a variable and site‐dependent data quality . To aid interpretation of this complex setting, we complemented seismic amplitude images with energy and similarity attributes as well with post‐stack acoustic impedance inversion. The final seismic sections expose, with unprecedented resolution, the basins' structure and the uppermost splays of the 2009 earthquake. The seismic data show fine details of the subsurface stratigraphic setting, revealing continental depocenters carved in the marine Meso‐Cenozoic substratum and displaced by a series of conjugate normal faults, mostly unknown before this study. Several of the imaged fault strands connect to the 2009 coseismic surface ruptures. Matching the seismic interpretation with constraints from surface geology and shallow boreholes, published data from field surveys and scientific drilling, we present a structural map of the Bazzano and Paganica basins with an estimation of the depth of the Meso‐Cenozoic substratum. This map highlights a different structure, evolution, and age of the two basins, with the older Bazzano basin that likely began to form in late Pliocene.
Key Points
Five high‐resolution seismic profiles image the shallow architecture of the 6 April 2009 (Mw 6.1) L'Aquila earthquake fault hanging wall
The final images expose the structure of Paganica and Bazzano basins and seismogenic faults dissecting them with unprecedented resolution
Interpretation of seismic data suggests that Paganica and Bazzano basins have different age, structure, and evolution
We present high‐resolution Vp and Vp/Vs models of the southern Apennines (Italy) computed using local earthquakes recorded from 2006 to 2011 with a graded inversion scheme that progressively resolves ...the crustal structure, from the large scale of the Apennines belt to the local scale of the normal fault system. High‐Vp bodies defined in the upper crust and midcrust under the external Apennines are interpreted as extensive mafic intrusions revealing anorogenic magmatism episodes that broadened on the Adriatic domain during Paleogene. Under the mountain belt, a low‐Vp region, annular to the Neapolitan volcanic district, indicates the existence of a thermal/fluid anomaly in the midcrust, coinciding with a shallow Moho and diffuse degassing of deeply derived CO2. In the belt axial zone, low‐Vp/Vs gas‐pressurized rock volumes under the Apulian carbonates correlate to high heat flow, strong CO2‐dominated gas emissions of mantle origin, and shallow carbonate reservoirs with pressurized CO2 gas caps. We hypothesize that the pressurized fluid volumes located at the base of the active fault system influence the rupture process of large normal faulting earthquakes, like the 1980 Mw6.9 Irpinia event, and that major asperities are confined within the high‐Vp Apulian carbonates. This study confirms once more that preexisting structures of the Pliocene Apulian belt controlled the rupture propagation during the Irpinia earthquake. The main shock broke a ~30 km long, NE dipping seismogenic structure, whereas delayed ruptures (both the 20 s and the 40 s subevents) developed on antithetic faults, reactivating thrust faults located at the eastern edge of the Apulian belt.
Key Points
Velocity structure of the Apennines is determined by a multiscale tomographyLarge Cenozoic mafic intrusions are identified in the Apulian crustPressurized CO2 reservoirs identified under the belt can affect seismicity
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