Serretti, P.

The aim of this paper is to provide some constrains on the time behavior of earthquake generation mechanism, through the usage of a non-parametric statistics that leads up to the empirical estimation of the hazard function. The results indicate that the most characterizing temporal feature for large (M 7.0+) worldwide shallow earthquake occurrence is a clustering lasting few years, indicating that the probability of earthquake occurrence is higher immediately after the occurrence of an event. After that, the process becomes almost time independent, as in a Poisson process. Remarkably, this time clustering is very similar to what previously found for different spatio-magnitude windows, and it does not seem to depend on the tectonic style of the region. This may support the hypothesis of an universal law for earthquake occurrence.

We present a 3-D P wave velocity model of the crust and shallowest mantle under the Italian region, that includes a revised Moho depth map, obtained by regional seismic travel time tomography. We invert 191,850 Pn and Pg wave arrival times from 6850 earthquakes that occurred within the region from 1988 to 2007, recorded by 264 permanent seismic stations. We adopt a high-resolution linear B-spline model representation, with 0.1􏰂 horizontal and 2 km vertical grid spacing, and an accurate finite-difference forward calculation scheme. Our nonlinear iterative inversion process uses the recent European reference 3-D crustal model EPcrust as a priori information. Our resulting model shows two arcs of relatively low velocity in the crust running along both the Alps and the Apennines, underlying the collision belts between plates. Beneath the Western Alps we detect the presence of the Ivrea body, denoted by a strong high P wave velocity anomaly. We also map the Moho discontinuity resulting from the inversion, imaged as the relatively sharp transition between crust and mantle, where P wave velocity steps up to values larger than 8 km/s. This simple condition yields an image quite in agreement with previous studies that use explicit representations for the discontinuity. We find a complex lithospheric structure characterized by shallower Moho close by the Tyrrhenian Sea, intermediate depth along the Adriatic coast, and deepest Moho under the two mountain belts.

The structure of the Earth’s upper mantle near convergent plate margins, such as along the Nubia–Eurasia collision zone in the Mediter ranean, involves strong seismic wave speed contrasts associated with subducting lithospheric slabs and opening backarc basins. In this environment, seismic wave propagation is strongly influenced by heterogeneity, and requires appropriate modelling practice. Although accurate numerical methods are often used to model seismic traveltimes in the crust, only approximate techniques have been used for the mantle, on the assumption that speed contrasts are weaker. We devise, optimize, and test a method aimed at recovering strongly heterogeneous mantle structures using a finite-difference scheme to calculate first-ar rival traveltimes and trace seismic rays with high accuracy even in the presence of strong gradients. We adapt this forward scheme—successfully used in local-scale tomography—to spherical geometry through source-specific Earth flattening approximations, and we split calculations in meshes with different step size to model optimally the crust (with a 2 km step) and the mantle (6 km step). We then use an iterative non-linear inversion approach, starting from a simple 1-D prior model. We test the ability of this procedure to reconstruct sample structures, devised to be illustrative for the Mediter ranean region, using synthetic data calculated on the real distribution of sources and stations reported by the Bulletins of the International Seismological Centre (ISC). Besides regular checkerboard patterns, we also reconstruct a more representative model. Different strategies are used and compared in linear and non-linear inversion. We find that a linear approach, by which rays are only traced once in the background model, may result in an illusory fit to data. Realistic upper-mantle structures strongly deflect seismic rays, and cor rect paths can only be found after a few iterations. Although linear inversion seems able to identify the main features quite well, we verify how non-linear inversion and 3-D ray tracing significantly improve the results, especially when we attempt to reconstruct a realistic structure. We also apply the finite-difference, non-linear, traveltime tomography to data from the ISC to retrieve upper-mantle structure in the Central Mediter ranean. We verify that the non-linear inversion is able to reveal shar pened velocity contrasts and thinner bodies than linear inversion. Clear differentiation found in the non- linear result, between signatures of northern and southern Dinarides—showing lithosphere subducting only beneath the southern sector—is more coherent with the regional geodynamic framework. Such improvements due to non-linear mantle tomography may contribute to the general picture of slab detachment and small-scale mantle convection in the Mediter ranean region, and therefore, significantly impact on geodynamic implications of resulting models.