Abstract
Abstract. In this study we present a new regional tomography model of the upper mantle beneath Italy and the surrounding area derived from the inversion of travel times of P and S waves from the updated International Seismological Centre (ISC) catalogue. Beneath Italy, we identify a high-velocity anomaly which has the appearance of a long, narrow "sausage" with a steeply dipping part down to a depth of 400 km and then expanding horizontally over approximately 400 km. Rather than to interpret it as a remnant of the former Tethyan oceanic slab, we consider that it is made up of the infra continental lithospheric mantle of Adria, which is progressively delaminated, whereas its overlying crust becomes progressively accreted into the Apenninic tectonic wedge.
Highlights
The Mediterranean region is located in the convergence zone between the African and European plates which is characterized by a very complex interaction of different tectonic regimes including subduction, collision, spreading and shear zones (e.g., Faccenna et al, 2004, 2014)
When going back in the past, the paleogeographic reconstructions of the various platform and basinal domains of Adria, with the Albanides, and Hellenides in the east, and the Apennines and Sicily in the west, are increasingly ambiguous. Crucial in this respect is whether the Mesozoic Ionian allochtonous units of the Albanides and Hellenides, and coeval Mesozoic basinal series from the Lagonegro and Imerese units of the southern Apennines and Sicily, are considered as lateral equivalents of the modern, still deep water Ionian basin (Roure et al, 2004, 2012)
In this paper we present a new 3-D seismic model of the upper mantle beneath the Italian region constructed based on similar calculation schemes as those used in Koulakov et al (2009), but using a considerably larger data set
Summary
The Mediterranean region is located in the convergence zone between the African and European plates which is characterized by a very complex interaction of different tectonic regimes including subduction, collision, spreading and shear zones (e.g., Faccenna et al, 2004, 2014). Amato et al, 1993; Alessandrini et al, 1995; Selvaggi and Chiarabba, 1995; Di Stefano et al, 1999; Cimini and De Gori, 2001; Orecchio et al, 2011; Gualtieri et al, 2014) Both regional and local scale tomography models provide valuable information on the deep processes which explains many observations on surface tectonics. The existence of deep seismicity down to ∼ 400 km beneath Calabria and the Tyrrhenian Sea and of the active volcanism of the Eolian Arc suggests that the subduction processes are active here (e.g., Isacks and Molnar, 1971; Selvaggi and Chiarabba, 1995) It was first proposed by Malinverno and Ryan (1986) that the loop-shaped boundary, leading to back-arc extension in the Tyrrhenian sea (Spadini et al, 1995), was formed due to strongly curved subduction occurring in the narrow zone in front of the Apennines. We provide some additional testing results to show that derived seismic structures related to the Apennines region are robust
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