Abstract
Many of the urban settlements in Central Italy are placed nearby active faults and, consequently, the ground motion evaluation and seismic site effects under near-fault earthquakes are noteworthy issues to be investigated. This paper presents the results of site investigations, the seismic site characterization, and the local seismic response for assessing the effects induced by the Mw 6.7 2 February 1703, near-fault earthquake at the Madonna delle Fornaci site (Pizzoli, Central Italy) in which notable ground failure phenomena were observed, as witnessed by several coeval sources. Even though recent papers described these phenomena, the geological characteristics of the site and the failure mechanism have never been assessed through in-situ investigations and numerical modeling. Within a project concerning the assessment of soil liquefaction potential and co-seismic ground failure, deep and shallow continuous core drilling, geophysical investigations and in-hole tests have been carried out. Subsequently, the geotechnical model has been defined and the numerical quantification of the different hypotheses of failure mechanisms has been evaluated. Analyses showed that liquefaction did not occur, and the excess pore water pressure induced by the shaking was not the source of the ground failure. Therefore, it was hypothesized that the sinkhole was likely caused by earthquake-induced gas eruption.
Highlights
Many of the urban settlements in Central Italy are placed nearby active faults and, the ground motion evaluation and seismic site effects on the environment under near-fault earthquakes are noteworthy issues to be investigated [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8].Regarding the ground failure, the widespread sinkholes generated during the recent Mw 6.4 29 December 2020, Petrinja (Croatia) earthquake, highlighted the importance to study the sinkhole formation caused by near-fault earthquakes [9,10,11]
This paper presents the results of site investigations, the seismic site characterization, and the local seismic response for assessing the effects induced by the Mw 6.7 2 February 1703, near-fault earthquake at the Madonna delle Fornaci site (Pizzoli, Central Italy) in which notable ground failure phenomena were observed, as witnessed by several coeval sources
This paper presents the results of site investigations, seismic site characterization, and local seismic response for assessing the effects induced by the Mw 6.7 2 February 1703, near-fault earthquake at the Madonna delle Fornaci site (MDF site) (Pizzoli, Central Italy) in which notable sinkhole formations were observed, as witnessed by several coeval sources [28,29,30,31,32] and in the Database of the Individual Seismogenic Sources (DISS) by INGV (http://diss.rm.ingv.it/dissGM/ (6 December 2021))
Summary
Many of the urban settlements in Central Italy are placed nearby active faults and, the ground motion evaluation and seismic site effects on the environment (among which surface fault rupture, landslide, liquefaction, ground rupture, sinkhole formation, etc.) under near-fault earthquakes are noteworthy issues to be investigated [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Studies [1] and [20] located the 1703 earthquake-induced sinkhole site nearby Pizzoli downtown, while [34] was very close to the ancient, but still active, mill placed close to the Aterno River in the alluvial plain. The attention is focused on the formation of two sinkholes opened about 175 m apart (“ninety-five steps”) close to the mill at the MDF case study site located in the alluvial plain of the Aterno River, very near to the epicenter of the 1703 earthquake and close to Pizzoli village.
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