The Capo Vaticano (Calabria) coastal terraces and the 1905 M7 earthquake: the geomorphological signature of regional uplift and coseismic slip in southern Italy

Abstract

The elevation of the Capo Vaticano coastal terraces (Tyrrhenian coast, central Calabria) is the combination of regional uplift and repeated coseismic displacement. We subtract the regional uplift from the total uplift (maximum average uplift rates 0.81-0.97 mm/yr since ~0.7 Ma) and obtain a residual fault-related displacement. Then, we model the residual displacement to provide constraints to the location and geometry of the seismogenic source of the 1905 M7 earthquake, the strongest – and still poorly understood – earthquake of the instrumental era in this area. We test four different potential sources for the dislocation modelling and find that 1) three sources are not compatible with the displacement observed along the terraces, and 2) the only source consistent with the local deformation is the 100°-striking Coccorino Fault. We calculate average long-term vertical slip rates of 0.2-0.3 mm/yr on the Coccorino Fault and estimate an average recurrence time of ~one millennium for a 1905-type earthquake