Local pattern of stress field and seismogenic sources in the Pergola-Melandro basin and the Agri valley (Southern Italy)

Abstract

Our study area is a ca 50 km long section of the central-southern Apennines tectonic belt that includes the Pergola–Melandro basin (PM) and the Agri valley (AV). This region is located between the areas affected by the 1980 Ms= 6.9 Irpinia and the 1857 M= 7.0 val d'Agri earthquakes and is characterized by rare historical events and very low and sparse background seismicity. In this study we provide new seismological and geophysical information to identify the characteristics of the seismotectonics in the area as the prevailing faulting mechanism and the fit of local to regional stress field. These data concern focal mechanisms from waveform modelling and P-wave polarities, analyses of borehole breakouts and detailed investigation of two seismic sequences. All the data cover a significantly broad range of magnitudes and depths and suggest that no important local variation in stress orientation seems to affect this area, which shows a NE–SW direction of extension consistent with that regionally observed in southern Italy. Such local homogeneity in the stress field pattern is peculiar to the study area; the variations of orientation and/or type of stress observed in the northern Apennines, or less than only 100 km toward the northwest within the same tectonic belt, are absent here. Furthermore, there is a suggestion for a northeastward sense of dip of the seismogenic faults in the region, an interesting constraint to the characterization of seismic sources.