We provide a database of the coseismic geological surface effects following the Mw 6.5 Norcia earthquake that hit central Italy on 30 October 2016. This was one of the strongest seismic events to occur in Europe in the past thirty years, causing complex surface ruptures over an area of >400 km2. The database originated from the collaboration of several European teams (Open EMERGEO Working Group; about 130 researchers) coordinated by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia. The observations were collected by performing detailed field surveys in the epicentral region in order to describe the geometry and kinematics of surface faulting, and subsequently of landslides and other secondary coseismic effects. The resulting database consists of homogeneous georeferenced records identifying 7323 observation points, each of which contains 18 numeric and string fields of relevant information. This database will impact future earthquake studies focused on modelling of the seismic processes in active extensional settings, updating probabilistic estimates of slip distribution, and assessing the hazard of surface faulting.

In the southern Apennines fold-and-thrust belt, thermal indicators record exhumation of sedimentary units from depths locally in excess of 5 km. The thrust belt is made of allochthonous sedimentary units that overlie a 6-8-km-thick, carbonate footwall succession. The latter, continuous with the foreland Apulian Platform, is deformed by reverse faults involving the underlying basement. Therefore, a switch from thin-skinned to thick-skinned thrusting occurred as the Apulian Platform carbonates-and the underlying thick continental lithosphere-were deformed during the latest shortening stages. Apatite fi ssion track data, showing cooling ages ranging between 9.2 ± 1.0 and 1.5 ± 0.8 Ma, indicate that exhumation marks these late tectonic stages, probably initiating with the buttressing of the allochthonous wedge against the western margin of the Apulian Platform. Pliocene-Pleistocene foreland advancing of the allochthonous units exceeds the total amount of slip that, based on cross-section balancing and restoration, could be transferred to the base of the allochthon from the underlying thick-skinned structures. This suggests that emplacement of the allochthon above the western portion of the Apulian Platform carbonates was followed by gravitational readjustments within the allochthonous wedge, coeval-and partly associated with-thick-skinned shortening at depth. The related denudation processes are interpreted to have played a primary role in tectonic exhumation.

The Diamante‐Terranova unit is an oceanic‐derived element within the thrust and nappe structure of the northern sector of the Calabrian Arc. Its metamorphic and structural signature reveals a long history of SE dipping subduction and collision‐related deformation of an oceanic lithospheric section underlying the narrow Diamante‐Terranova basin. The deformation history of the Diamante‐Terranova unit may be related to three main tectonic phases. The first one is characterized by a structural association which includes features that developed during a progressive deformation related to the evolution of a deep‐seated shear zone. Kinematic indicators characterizing subduction‐related structures clearly show a top‐to‐the‐northwest sense of overthrust shear. The second tectonic phase that can be recognized in the area is characterized by structures that may be related to the onset of shear deformation induced by a postcollisional northeastward motion of the overriding plate. The third tectonic phase is recorded by brittle features related to the latest tectonic events affecting the Calabrian Arc during the opening of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Shear sense indicators and available radiometric and stratigraphic information, together with plate kinematic data, allowed us to infer the time evolution of this sector of the Calabrian Arc and to assess that the Diamante‐Terranova unit cannot be considered as an “Eoalpine” element since its deformation, related to subduction‐collision processes, occurred prior to the end of the Cretaceous.

MonteAlpi represents the only area of the southern Apennines where Apulian carbonates, elsewhere buried beneath a several-km thick allochthon, are exposed at the surface. These rocks also represent the reservoir interval in southern Italy’s major oil fields. The tectonic evolution of this substantially exhumed area of the fold-and-thrust belt, derived from conventional structural and stratigraphic considerations via integration into the regional framework, has been tested and detailed by the analysis of vitrinite reflectance, clay mineralogy, apatite fission track, and fluid inclusion data. The Apulian carbonates of Monte Alpi underwent significant tectonic burial as a result of thin-skinned thrusting in early Pliocene times. Simplified burial and thermal modeling suggests that the thickness of allochthonous material emplaced on top of Monte Alpi was probably in excess of 5 km. Exhumation is envisaged to have started in the late Pliocene, when the area emerged and the tectonic load started to be eroded off Monte Alpi. A significant stage of exhumation is inferred to have taken place in uppermost Pliocene-early Pleistocene times as a result of thick-skinned reverse faulting at depth and coeval thin-skinned extension within the overlying allochthon. After shortening ceased throughout the whole southern Apennines, middle Pleistocene-Holocene tectonic exhumation of Monte Alpi was essentially controlled by thick-skinned extensional tectonics. This process is still active and controls the present-day seismicity of the study area

The reconstruction of the thermal history of folded and thrust units is crucial to define the pattern of tectonic loading and the time-space evolution of an orogen where tectonic exhumation processes occurred at shallow crustal levels. In the present study, a well-constrained reconstruction of the thermal maturity in the axial zone of the southern Apennines has been achieved by the combined use of different thermal indicators in diagenesis. The major results are: (i) documentation of a jump in thermal maturity from the Apenninic Platform derived tectonic unit (from immature to early mature stages of hydrocarbon maturation) to the Lagonegro Basin derived tectonic units (late diagenetic zone); (ii) documentation of along-strike slighter variations in the Lagonegro units, concerning thermal maturity (thus maximum burial temperatures). This can be related to changes in amounts of tectonic burial and erosion/exhumation because of the lack of cylindricity of contractional structures; (iii) recognition of an independent thermal evolution of the allochthonous chain compared with the Apulian Platform tectonic unit with Mt Alpi area (in the late mature stage of hydrocarbon generation) interpreted as a sector of localized, intense exhumation within the External Zone of the orogen