Rupture Kinematics and Structural‐Rheological Control of the 2016 Mw 6.1 Amatrice (Central Italy) Earthquake From Joint Inversion of Seismic and Geodetic Data

Abstract

We investigate the rupture process of the 2016, Mw6.1 Amatrice earthquake, the first shock of a seismic sequence characterized by three damaging earthquakes occurred in Central Italy between August and October. We jointly invert strong motion, High-Rate GPS data, GPS and DInSAR displacements and we adopt ad-hoc velocity profiles of the crust below each station. The retrieved source model reveals a high degree of complexity, characterized by a prominent bi-lateral rupture with low slip at the hypocentre, two well-separated slip patches and a rupture front accelerating when breaking the largest patch. The rupture of the main asperity features a slip-velocity pulse that is impeded ahead of its current direction and splits into two pulses. In this fault section we find clues of structural and rheological control of the rupture propagation due to the fault system segmentation.