https://doi.org/10.5194/se-2021-29 Preprint. Discussion started: 22 April 2021 c Author(s) 2021. CC BY 4.0 License. Geodynamic and seismotectonic model of a long-lived transverse structure: The Schio-Vicenza Fault System (NE Italy) Dario Zampieri1, Paola Vannoli2, Pierfrancesco Burrato2 1Dipartimento di Geoscienze, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy 5 2Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione Roma 1, Rome, Italy Correspondence to: Pierfrancesco Burrato (
[email protected]) Abstract. We make a thorough review of geological and seismological data on the long-lived Schio-Vicenza Fault System (SVFS) in northern Italy and present for it a geodynamic and seismotectonic interpretation. The SVFS is a major and high angle structure transverse to the mean trend of the Eastern Southern Alps fold-and-thrust belt, 10 and the knowledge of this structure is deeply rooted in the geological literature and spans for more than a century and a half. The main fault of the SVFS is the Schio-Vicenza Fault (SVF), which has a significant imprint in the landscape across the Eastern Southern Alps and the Veneto-Friuli foreland. The SVF can be divided into a northern segment, extending into the chain north of Schio and mapped up to the Adige Valley, and a southern one, coinciding with the SVF proper. The latter segment borders to the east the Lessini, Berici Mts. and Euganei Hills block, separating this foreland structural high from the 15 Veneto-Friuli foreland, and continues southeastward beneath the recent sediments of the plain via the blind Conselve-Pomposa fault. The structures forming the SVFS have been active with different tectonic phases and different style of faulting at least since the Mesozoic, with a long-term dip-slip component of faulting well defined and, on the contrary, the horizontal component of the movement not well constrained.