Recasting Historical Earthquakes in Coastal Areas (Gargano Promontory, Italy): Insights from Marine Paleoseismology

Abstract

Historical earthquakes of the Gargano Promontory, an uplifted foreland sector in southeastern Italy, have been usually regarded as generated by inland faults. Some have been associated with activity of the Mattinata fault, a section of a regional east-west shear zone. The 10 August 1893 M w 5.4 event is one such earthquake, but its current onshore location is only loosely based on the damage pattern.Regions that were hit by offshore earthquakes are also known to be affected by a methodological bias such that offshore historical events appear to be located onshore. To test this condition for the 1893 earthquake, we pursued an alternative hypothesis for its location. The earthquake occurred near the Gondola fault zone, a right-lateral active fault system representing the offshore counterpart of the Mattinata fault and hence capable of producing sizable earthquakes along the Gargano coast. We focused on its westernmost segment, suggesting that it could be the causative fault of the 1893 earthquake (in agreement with both the damage distribution and reported environmental effects).The approach we present works side by side with the recent developments of the algorithms used to compile historical catalogs, providing a fine-scale, geologically based method to define or confirm the dubious location of historical earthquakes. Marine paleoseismology is a new field stemming from the increased capabilities of high-resolution marine techniques in supporting classical paleoseismological analyses for the exploration of the seismogenic potential of offshore faults. Based on Late Pleistocene and Holocene individual or cumulative earthquake records, the potential of offshore faults can now be constrained in terms of expected magnitude and recurrence intervals.We stress the importance of revisiting historical earthquakes in coastal zones using marine paleoseismological data to assess regional seismic hazard, particularly in tectonic settings where regional-size seismogenic areas straddle the onshore and the onshore-offshore zone.

Deformed Pleistocene marine terraces along the Ionian Sea margin of southern Italy: Unveiling blind fault‐related folds contribution to coastal uplift

“…The damage distribution and the effects associated with some of these events show that they may have been sourced by the fault system that includes the modeled coastal segments and stretches to the east in the offshore area [ Ferranti et al ., ]. Although we stress the difficulty of locating offshore historical and instrumental earthquakes, due to the uncompleted macroseismic field and the poor seismological constraints [e.g., Fracassi et al ., ], this contention is consistent with the hypothesized recent shift of significant activity from the coastal to the offshore portion of the fault system.…”

Sedimentary features influencing the occurrence and spatial variability of seismites (late Messinian, Gargano Promontory, southern Italy)

“…The middle-Pleistocene-Holocene uplift results from the buckling of Apulian foreland due to the higher hinge rollback of the northern Adriatic lithosphere with respect to the southern one (Doglioni et al, 1994). The Gargano Promontory is intersected by several tectonic lineaments, including normal, reverse and strike-slip faults (Argnani et al, 2009;Bertotti et al, 1999;Billi et al, 2007;Borre et al, 2003;Brankman and Aydin, 2004;Chilovi et al, 2000;Fracassi et al, 2012;Funiciello et al, 1992;Milano et al, 2005;Tondi et al, 2005). The most prominent structural feature is the Mattinata fault (Fig.…”

Active Extension in a Foreland Trapped Between Two Contractional Chains: The South Apulia Fault System (SAFS)

“…Strike-slip faulting in the larger Apulia region is documented in its northern part along the MGF (Brankman & Aydin, 2004;Favali et al, 1993;Funiciello et al, 1988;Tondi et al, 2005) and was hypothesized by Gambini and Tozzi (1996) in the Salento Peninsula. Right-lateral component of movement on E-W trending faults affecting the Apulia region was also associated with several crustal earthquakes (Fracassi & Valensise, 2007;Fracassi et al, 2012). However, what is the evidence of transtension in the Apulia Swell?…”