Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/2122/10246
Authors: Cultrera, F.* 
Barreca, G.* 
Scarfì, L.* 
Monaco, C.* 
Title: Fault reactivation by stress pattern reorganization in the Hyblean foreland domain of SE Sicily (Italy) and seismotectonic implications
Journal: Tectonophysics 
Series/Report no.: /661(2015)
Publisher: Elsevier Science Limited
Issue Date: Oct-2015
DOI: 10.1016/j.tecto.2015.08.043
URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040195115004722
Keywords: Hyblean foreland
seismic sequences
fault reactivation
3D fault modelling
stress changing
seismotectonics
Subject Classification04. Solid Earth::04.06. Seismology::04.06.01. Earthquake faults: properties and evolution 
Abstract: Between the October 2011 and the July 2012, several seismic swarms occurred in the Hyblean foreland domain of SE Sicily (Italy) along the Cavagrande Canyon, one of the most impressive fluvial incisions of Sicily. Despite the low magnitude of the events (main shock with M~3.7), they represent the biggest strain release of the Hyblean area over the last ten years. A careful wave-form analysis of the earthquakes revealed that most of them form a family of ―multiplets‖. These findings allow us to reconstruct the attitude of the accountable fault plane by interpolating their highprecision 3D location parameters into a GIS platform. A detailed morpho-structural analysis, performed at the ideal updip projection of the modelled plane, showed that during the Middle-Late Pleistocene the epicentral area has been deformed by a belt of extensional faults, a segment of which matches well with the computer-generated surface. Despite the field evidence, computed focal solutions support contrasting strike-slip kinematics on the same fault plane, clearly indicating a dextral shearing on this pre-existing normal fault. The seismic swarms nucleated on a small rupture area along a ~10 km long, NW-SE trending fault segment, that could be able to generate M~6 earthquakes. Following our analysis and looking at seismicity distribution in the SE portion of Hyblean area, we asses that a stress pattern reorganization occurred all over the Hyblean foreland between the Late Pleistocene and present-day. Change in the trajectory of the max stress axes (from vertical to horizontal) seems to have involved a pre-existing large scale fault configuration with considerable seismotectonic implications.
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