GSA Meeting 2014 - Vancouver B.C.

The 2014 GSA Meeting will be held in Vancouver, B.C. (Canada).

I will give two presentations:

Seno, S., L. Bonini, R. Basili, G. Toscani, P. Burrato, G. Valensise. Interactions between growing extensional faults and pre-existing discontinuities: implications on surface effects and seismic hazard studies.

Session 2 “T1. The Structure of Faults from Top to Bottom: Implication for Fluid Flow, Ore Deposits, and Seismic Hazard I”. Sunday, 19 October 2014, in the Vancouver Convention Center-West, 118. This session begins at 8:00 AM.

Presentation Time: 9:05 AM

Ferranti, L., P. Burrato, L. Guzzetta, F. Pepe, G. Barreca, M. Mattia, C. Monaco, V. Bruno. Active thrusting in SW Sicily (Italy): hunting for seismogenic sources using a multidisciplinary approach.

Session 242 “T38. Geology of Earthquakes, Faults, and Fault Systems”. Tuesday, 21 October 2014, in the Vancouver Convention Center-West, 208/209. This session begins at 1:00 PM.

Presentation Time: 2:45 PM

GSA Meeting home page

Great ShakeOut Drill 2014

Today October 16* at 10:16 AM official ShakeOut B.C. Day, also at Montecito Elementary School (Burnaby, B.C.) like all over the world!

DROP!  COVER!  HOLD ON!

Useful links

Great ShakeOut organization

Great ShakeOut - British Columbia

Great ShakeOut - Italy

Two articles accepted!

Two recently accepted papers:

Ferranti, L., P. Burrato, F. Pepe, E. Santoro, M.E. Mazzella, D. Morelli, S. Passaro, G. Vannucci (2014). An active oblique-contractional belt at the transition between the Southern Apennines and Calabrian Arc: the Amendolara Ridge, Ionian Sea, Italy. Tectonics, doi:10.1002/2014TC003624.
Tectonics web page

Seismotectonic map of the Amendolara Ridge showing thrust segments used in the dislocation modeling (solid boxes: segment; dashed box: relay ramp; red from this study, navy from Santoro et al. [2009]), epicenters of historical events (1917 event, and 1988 earthquake mainshock and aftershocks), and the trend of strain axis (average seismological Shmax axis from Presti et al [2013]; individual seismological P-axis from Figure 11 and Table S1; shortening axis derived from fault-slip inversion from Ferranti et al. [2009]). The Sparker lines used for elastic modeling (Figure S2) are indicated. Location of the active fault scarp detected from SCS profiles is shown. AS, Amendolara Segment; CS, Cariati Segment; RR, Rossano Relay; VS, Valsinni Segment; PS, Pollino Segment; VCS, Valsinni Coastal Segment.

Vannoli, P., P. Burrato, G. Valensise (2014). The seismotectonics of the Po Plain (Northern Italy): tectonic diversity in a blind faulting domain. Pure and Applied Geophysics, doi:10.1007/s00024-014-0873-0.
Pure and Applied Geophysics web page

Sketch showing the four groups of seismogenic sources identified in this work. Group #1: shallow thrusts of the Northern Apennines, including the sub-emergent Pedeapenninic Thrust Front; Group #2: deep ramps of the Apennines thrusts; Group #3: inherited faults cutting the foreland; Group #4: transverse structures (or lineaments), interpreted as the response of the upper lithosphere to the variation of the dip of the regional monocline. EA Emilia Arc, FRA Ferrara-Romagna Arc, PTF Pedeapenninic Thrust Front.

New article submitted!

We just submitted a paper entitled “The seismotectonics of the Po Plain (northern Italy): tectonic diversity in a blind faulting domain” by Paola Vannoli, Pierfrancesco Burrato and Gianluca Valensise, for publication on Pure and Applied Geophysics.

This paper is partly a review and partly the result of original research on the identification of seismogenic sources in the Po Plain, Northern Italy, and on the role played by the paleogeography in controlling the geometry and style of the active faults systems. These are mostly blind, i.e. buried beneath the thick sedimentary cover of the Po basin, and hence very elusive, yet they pose a significant seismic hazard as testified by the recent 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake sequence. In this work we reorganized and presented in an orderly scheme the established knowledge on the blind shallow thrusts such as those responsible for the 2012 earthquakes, but we also shed light on two new potential categories of seismogenic sources. We show that a significant contribution to Po Plain seismic activity, end hence to the local seismic hazard, comes from reactivated inherited faults and from transverse structures that developed within the compressional wedges.

Mt Sinabung (Sumatra) eruption

Dramatic footage of rare volcanic lightning as Mt Sinabung (Sumatra) spews river of fire (from http://www.telegraph.co.uk)

Pictures of the Milazzo_2013 scientific cruise

You can see some pictures taken during the Milazzo_2013 scientific cruise just published in the "Pictures" section of this blog.

"Milazzo 2003" Cruise, January 2014..

On board of the R/V Urania

From 3 to 10 January 2014 I will be on board of the R/V Urania to explore the offshore area located between the northern Sicilian coastal city of Milazzo and Vulcano, the southernmost of the Aeolian Islands. We sailed from the harbour of Napoli, and the scientific party is leaded by the C.N.R. scientist Salvatore Passaro. Besides the researchers of the C.N.R., other scientists and students making the party are from the Universities of Trieste, Napoli and Palermo.
The target of the study is the offshore portion of a fault system known on-land as the Tindari-Letojanni system, and probably connecting with the Southern Tyrrhenian compressional belt located west of the Aeolian Island archipelago. This fault system was responsible of the Mw 6.1 15 April 1978, Golfo di Patti earthquake, that was characterized by a right-lateral trascurrent faulting mechanism.

The Party Cheaf of the scientific cruise: Sasà Passaro

Click here to see the study area of the Milazzo 2013 Cruise.