Seismic deformation at the Alban Hills volcano during the 1989-1990 seismic sequence

Abstract

We analysed the one-year-long seismic swarm at the Alban Hills volcano which occurred during 1989-1990. We portray spatial distribution of seismic moment release, better delineating the activated volume during the swarm. The seismic structure is imaged as a 7-km long, 3-km wide, and 3-km thick volume, located between 2 and 5 km depth, and NW-SE striking. Fault plane solutions and scalar seismic moments for the largest earthquakes provide the description of the average strain rate tensor. The principal strain rate axes show a dominant extension in NE-SW direction, a SE-NW direction of compression and a negligible thickening rate. P and T axes direction of the smaller earthquakes suggests that the same mode of deformation is distributed all over the activated volume. These results are discussed in terms of seismic deforming processes active at the Alban Hills volcano, in the frame of magmatic inflation recently invoked to explain the rapid vertical uplift affecting part of the volcano. The observed average deformation is consistent with shear failures occurring on faults connecting stress-oriented dykes in response to an increasing fluid pressure.