An improved stress map for Italy and surrounding regions (central Mediterranean)

Abstract

We present an updated present‐day stress data compilation for the Italian region and discuss it with respect to the geodynamic setting and the seismicity of the area. We collected and analyzed 190 new stress data from borehole breakouts, seismicity, and active faults and checked in detail the previous compilation [Montone et al., 1999]. Our improved data set consists of 542 data, 362 of which with a reliable quality for stress maps. The Italian region is well sampled, allowing the computation of constrained smoothed stress maps; for surrounding regions we added the World Stress Map 2003 release data. These maps depict the active stress conditions and, in the areas where the data are sparse, contribute to understand the relationship between active stress, past tectonic setting, and the seismicity of the study region. The new data are particularly representative along the northern Apennine front, from the Po Plain to offshore the Adriatic, and along the southern Tyrrhenian Sea, north of Sicily, where they point out a compressive tectonic regime. In the Alps both compressive and transcurrent regimes are observed. Our data also confirm that the whole Apenninic belt and the Calabrian arc are extending. Along the central Adriatic coast, changes from one stress regime to another are shown by abrupt variations in the minimum horizontal stress directions. Other gentler stress rotations, as, for instance, from the southern Apennines to the Calabrian arc or along the northern Apennines, follow the curvature of the arcs and are not associated to a stress regime variation.