Paleoseismic history of the intermountain Rieti Basin (Central Apennines, Italy)
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: . From the paleoseismological and seismotectonic point of view, the intermountain basins of the Central Apennines of Italy are one of the most studied areas worldwide. Within this context, however, the Rieti Basin, bounded at its sides by active faults and with its peculiar rhombohedral shape, is a relatively overlooked area, and its most recent paleoseismological studies date back to the ‘90s. This is a key area both for completing the paleoseismological history of this sector of the chain and for understanding how the present-day extensional regime is accommodated, through time by the faults bounding the basin. With this aim in mind, we excavated 17 paleoseismological trenches along the normal faults bordering the Rieti Basin (Central Apennines, Italy) and unveiled 15 paleoearthquakes that ruptured the faults during the last ca. 20 kyr. Our analysis of the paleoearthquake succession along the basin-bounding faults suggests that a temporal clustering of rupturing events characterizes the basin with a maximum credible earthquake of Mw 6.5, consistently within this sector of the Central Apennines. These results suggest that for the Rieti Basin, stress transfer among surrounding faults can be ascribed as one of the processes behind the temporal clustering of earthquakes.
Authors: Franz A. Livio, Anna M. Blumetti, Valerio Comerci, Francesca Ferrario, Gilberto Binda, Marco Caciagli, Michela Colombo, Pio Di Manna, Fernando Ferri, Fiorenzo Fumanti, Roberto Gambillara, Maurizio Guerra, Luca Guerrieri, Paolo Lorenzoni, Valerio Materni, Francesco Miscione, Rosa Nappi, Rosella Nave, Kathleen Nicoll, Alba Peiro, Marco Pizza, Roberto Pompili, Luca M. Puzzilli, Mauro Roma, Aurora Rossi, Valerio Ruscito, Vincenzo Sapia, Argelia Silva Fragoso, Emanuele Scaramuzzo, Frank Thomas, Giorgio Tringali, Stefano Urbini, Andrea Zerboni, Alessandro M. Michetti
Institutions: University of Insubria, Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale, Norwegian Institute for Water Research, INGV Sezione di Bologna, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, INGV Sezione di Roma 2, INGV Osservatorio Vesuviano, University of Utah, Universidad de Zaragoza, University of Milan
Language: English
Subfield: Geophysics
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,553
OpenAlex ID: W7124305775