Seismotectonics of the active thrust front in southwestern Sicily: hints on the Belice and Selinunte seismogenic sources

2014

We present a seismotectonic model of the active thrust front in western Sicily, which includes the area hit by the 1968 Belice earthquake sequence. The ~40 km long South-WEstern Sicilian Thrust (SWEST) is formed by two aligned albeit non-parallel fault arrays, the Granitola-Castelevetrano Thrust System (GCTS) in the west and the Partanna- Poggioreale Thrust System (PPTS) in the east. The ~NE-SW trending, NW-dipping GCTS straddles from the Pelagian coastline to Castelvetrano, is ~18 km long and composed of two segments, with the northern, ~12 km long one showing geodetic and geologic evidence of active deformation (Barreca et al., 2014). The segment is marked by a sharp gradient in Different…