Coulomb stress changes in the area of December 2013–January 2014 Sannio-Matese seismic sequence (Southern Italy)

Abstract

The Italian Apennines are seat of extensional deformation, concentrated along the inner part of the mountain belt due to the opening of the Tyrrhenian back-arc basin during the late Miocene and the following rolling back subduction of Adriatic plate with an extension velocity of about 3 mm year−1 (D’Agostino et al. 2008; Faccenna et al. 2004). Apennines chain is a zone of high seismic hazard (http://zonesismiche.mi.ingv.it; “Mappa di pericolositàsismica del territorionazionale”; D’Amico et al. 2013a) and it has been affected by a number of earthquakes in the past century suffering intensity X or higher several times in the past centuries (Boschi et al. 2000; CPTI Working Group 2004). The most recent examples are the 1980, M = 6.9, Irpinia events (Pino et al. 2008; Secomandi et al. 2013); the 1997–1998 Umbria-Marche (Caccamo et al. 2007) and the 2009 L’Aquila (D’Amico et al. 2010a, 2013b) sequences.