Present-day stress-field modelling of southern Italy constrained by stress and GPS data

Abstract

The present-day tectonic setting of the Italian peninsula is very complex and involves competing geodynamic processes. In this context, southern peninsular Italy is characterised by extension along the Apenninic belt and in the Tyrrhenian margin and by transpression in the Apulia–Gargano region. The extension is well defined by means of geological, seismological, and contemporary stress data. For the latter only few data are available in the Apulia–Gargano region, leaving the state of stress in that area unresolved. Here we develop a finite-element model of the southern Italian region in order to predict the contemporary stress field. Our model predictions are constrained by model-independent observations of the orientation of maximum horizontal stress ( S Hmax), the tectonic regime, and the horizontal velocities derived from GPS observations. We performed a blind test with 31 newly acquired S H max orientations in the Southern Apennines. These new data come from the analysis of orehole breakouts performed in 46 deep oil exploration wells ranging in depth from 1300 to 5500 m. The model results agree with the stress data that define a prevailing NW–SE S H max orientation along the Apenninic belt and foredeep and thus are capable to predict the stress field where no stress information is available. We first analyse how much model predictions, based on older data, deviate from present-day stress data and then recalibrate the models based on our new stress data, giving insight into the resolution of both models and data. In the studied region, which is affected by low deformation rates, we find that geodetic data alone cannot resolve such low levels of deformation due to the high relative measurement errors. We conclude that both GPS and stress data are required to constrain model results.