Field Trip Guide to Active Tectonics Studies in the High Agri Valley

Abstract

The year 2007 is the 150 anniversary of the Great Neapolitan Earthquake which on 16 December 1857 struck a vast region of Southern Italy and was centered in the Val d’Agri (Agri River valley), one of the largest basins of the Southern Apennines mountain chain. The earthquake effects were promptly studied by Robert Mallett, an Irish engineer who published an extensive report considered a landmark in the modern Seismology [Mallet, R., 1862. The great Neapolitan earthquake of 1857. The first principles of observational seismology. Chapman and Hill (Publ.), London]. Although this earthquake is one of the largest (M~7) in the national seismic catalogue, the location and geometry of the causative fault are object of a warm debate which has blazed in the last years within the scientific community. The querelle is not limited to the identification of seismogenic sources in the Val d’Agri area but, obviously, imbues models of the Quaternary tectonic evolution of the Apennines. Taking the occasion of this recurrence, the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) and the Istituto di Metodologie per l’Analisi Ambientale del CNR (CNR-IMAA) in Tito (Potenza), with the contribution of the Università della Basilicata at Potenza, have promoted a three-day meeting in the Val d’Agri with the aim of discussing field evidences and models for active tectonics in the area.