0000000000190610
AUTHOR
Pierfrancesco Burrato
Elusive active faults in a low strain rate region (Sicily, Italy): Hints from a multidisciplinary land-to-sea approach
Low Strain Rate regions (LSRrs), i.e., areas undergoing tectonic deformation at rates of 1 mm/yr or less, often host important cities and highly vulnerable anthropogenic assets, and due to their subdued topography and relatively infrequent seismicity, are often considered low seismic hazard areas. Despite this, infrequent but high-magnitude earthquakes in such regions suggest that identifying active structures in the LSRr is one of the primary challenges for both the scientific community and modern societies. In such regions, one of the main issues in identifying active faults is the lack of valuable outcrop data due to erosional/sedimentation rates overwhelming the fault deformation, causi…
Extremely fast Holocene coastal landscape evolution in the Kachchh Upland (NW India): Clues from a multidisciplinary review
The coastal landscape of the Kachchh Upland (KU) region (NW-India) changed over the last few thousand years from a shallow marine gulf to a salty desert (1-4 meters asl). In this area, bordered to the south by the Northern Hill Range (NHR), the tectonic-climatic interaction triggered the sea level fall from +2/4 m circa (6000-2000 BP) to zero. An ancient river pattern deposited a tidally regulated delta area during the sea level fall that stopped 2000-3000 years ago due to tectonic activity and a dry climate. Deltaic-alluvial fans (DAF) in front of the NHR suggest that the KU's tectonic activity led to fast landscape evolution. We explored such drastic changes by integrating scientific info…
Active deformation evidence in the offshore of western Calabria (southern Tyrrhenian Sea) from ultra-resolution multichannel seismic reflection data: results from the Gulf of Sant'Eufemia
<p>An ultra-resolution, multichannel seismic reflection data set was collected during an oceanographic cruise organised in the frame of the “<em>Earthquake Potential of Active Faults using offshore Geological and Morphological Indicators</em>” (EPAF) project, which was founded by the Scientific and Technological Cooperation (Scientific Track 2017) between the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space of the State of Israel. The data acquisition approach was based on innovative technologies for the offshore imaging of stratigraphy and structures alo…
Plio-Quaternary coastal landscape evolution of north-western Sicily (Italy)
We present and discuss the results of a geomorphological and geological study aimed at reconstructing the Plio-Quaternary evolution of the NW Sicily coastal belt, a low strain rate region in the central Mediterranean Sea. We performed morphometric and field analysis of Quaternary marine terraces extracting more than 300 shoreline location points subdivided into six orders. The obtained dataset was validate by investigating the morphological changes along topographic profiles and comparing the extracted locations and elevations with the stratigraphic boundaries in the Plio-Quaternary units. We distinguished two contiguous coastal sectors characterized by different paleo-shoreline elevations …
An active oblique-contractional belt at the transition between the Southern Apennines and Calabrian Arc: The Amendolara Ridge, Ionian Sea, Italy
High-resolution, single-channel seismic and multibeam bathymetry data collected at the Amendolara Ridge, a key submarine area marking the junction between the Apennine collision belt and the Calabrian subduction forearc, reveal active deformation in a supposedly stable crustal sector. New data, integrated with existing multichannel seismic profiles calibrated with oil-exploratory wells, show that middle to late Pleistocene sediments are deformed in growth folds above blind oblique-reverse faults that bound a regional pop-up. Data analysis indicates that ~10 to 20 km long banks that top the ~80 km long, NW-SE trending ridge are structural culminations above en echelon fault segments. Numeric…
Late Quaternary coastal uplift of southwestern Sicily, central Mediterranean sea
Abstract Mapping and luminescence aging of raised marine terraces and aeolian ridges along an ∼90 km coastal stretch in southwestern Sicily provide the first quantitative assessment of vertical tectonic deformation in this region, which spans the frontal part of an active thrust belt. We recognized a staircase of eleven terraces and nine related aeolian ridges. The elevation profile of terraces parallel to the coast shows a >90 km long bell-shaped pattern, onto which shorter-wavelength (∼10 km long) undulations are superimposed. Luminescence ages from terraced beach deposits and aeolian sediments constrain the position of paleoshorelines formed during MIS 5e, 7a and 7c, with a maximum uplif…
Structural architecture and active deformation pattern in the northern sector of the Aeolian-Tindari-Letojanni fault system (SE Tyrrhenian Sea-NE Sicily) from integrated analysis of field, marine geophysical, seismological and geodetic data
Framed in the current geodynamics of the central Mediterranean, the Aeolian-Tindari-Letojanni fault system is part of a wider NW-SE oriented right-lateral wrench zone which accommodates diverging motion between regional-scale blocks located at the southern edge of the Calabrian Arc. In order to investigate the structural architecture and the active deformation pattern of the northern sector of this tectonic feature, structural observations on-land, high and very-high resolution seismic reflection data, swath bathymetry data and seismological and geodetic data were merged from the Lipari-Vulcano volcanic complex (central sector of the Aeolian Islands) to the Peloritani Mountains across the G…
Active faulting and continental slope instability in the Gulf of Patti (Tyrrhenian side of NE Sicily, Italy): a field, marine and seismological joint analysis
The Gulf of Patti and its onshore sector represent one of the most seismically active regions of the Italian Peninsula. Over the period 1984–2014, about 1800 earthquakes with small-to-moderate magnitude and a maximum hypocentral depth of 40 km occurred in this area. Historical catalogues reveal that the same area was affected by several strong earthquakes such as the Mw = 6.1 event in April 1978 and the Mw = 6.2 one in March 1786 which have caused severe damages in the surrounding localities. The main seismotectonic feature affecting this area is represented by a NNW–SSE trending right-lateral strike-slip fault system called ‘‘Aeolian–Tindari–Letojanni’’ (ATLFS) which has been interpreted a…
Extremely fast Holocene coastal landscape evolution in the Kachchh Upland (NW India): Clues from a multidisciplinary review
The coastal landscape of the Kachchh Upland (KU) region (NW-India) changed over the last few thousand years from a shallow marine gulf to a salty desert (1-4 meters asl). In this area, bordered to the south by the Northern Hill Range (NHR), the tectonic-climatic interaction triggered the sea level fall from +2/4 m circa (6000-2000 BP) to zero. An ancient river pattern deposited a tidally regulated delta area during the sea level fall that stopped 2000-3000 years ago due to tectonic activity and a dry climate. Deltaic-alluvial fans (DAF) in front of the NHR suggest that the KU's tectonic activity led to fast landscape evolution. We explored such drastic changes by integrating scientific info…
Plio-Quaternary coastal landscape evolution of north-western Sicily (Italy)
We present and discuss the results of a geomorphological and geological study aimed at reconstructing the Plio-Quaternary evolution of the NW Sicily coastal belt , a low strain rate region in the central Mediterranean Sea. We performed morphometric and field analysis of Quaternary marine terraces extracting more than 300 shoreline location points subdivided into six orders. The obtained dataset was validate by investigating the morphological changes along topographic profiles and comparing the extracted locations and elevations with the stratigraphic boundaries in the Plio-Quaternary units. We distinguished two contiguous coastal sectors characterized by different paleo-shoreline elevations…