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Seismicity, Seismotectonics and Crustal Velocity Structure of the Messina Strait

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Seismicity, Seismotectonics and Crustal Velocity Structure of the Messina Strait Seismicity, seismotectonics and crustal velocity structure of the Messina Strait Istituto Nazionale di L. Scarfì, H. Langer, A. Scaltrito Geofisica e Vulcanologia Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Catania, Italy. Sezione di Catania contacting e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] 14.00 Long. E 17.00 3 3 3 0 10 3 . N . A ) 8 km 8 Tyrrhenian Sea 3 3 ea Alpine S -A an MSR Introduction p ni en e MSC n rrh in Aeolian Islands hy ic T It's now 100 years ago that a disastrous earthquake on December 28, 1908, one of the largest events ever recorded in the O r o MSI g S e ou n th GMB ern c central Mediterranean, destroyed Messina, Reggio Calabria and the adjacent areas. In addition to the damage due to the Fa Ty r ul rr A MRC t S hen n ATN yst ia ta MPN em n ri impact of the seismic waves, a great deal of losses was due to a Tsunami which developed as a consequence of the lo i e N N an P it - . r ro t t 0 lo b e a a a earthquake. In the last decades plenty of material has been collected in the Messina Strait, both concerning seismic data as 0 P al . C ts L L 8 M 3 MAL MTT MMB well as the tectonic structure. From topography and the bathymetry we infer marked escarpments which separates the Chain s ghrebian it nnine - Ma n Mt. Etna Ionian Sea Ape U n sicilian and calabrian mainlands (Fig. 1). From geological investigations at the surface, however, we have no proof whether ia b MPAZ re N h g . a the important topographical elements around the Messina Strait form main fault systems, perhaps cutting the whole crust t M a - n M L a i a l l i t Etnean volcanics and reaching the upper mantle. ic a s S E c Calabro-Peloritan Units 1 1 a r 8 8 0 p . In the present study we present a synoptic view on seismotectonics, seismicity and 3D velocity structure. The analyses are m 0 ian Sea Hyblean Foreland 7 Ion 7 . e Maghrebian Units n 3 3 7 t 3 Hyblean Foreland 15.35 Long. E 16.01 0 10 Depth (km) 30 40 based on seismic data collected in the time span from 1999 to 2007 (Fig. 2). Fault plane solutions and seismicity patterns Main thrust front 0 0 25 50 Normal faults ( strike-slip help to identify regimes of tectonic motion. Besides this, 3D seismic imaging permits to identify the presence of lateral a km component shown by arrows) velocity contrasts along major fault systems. 0 A 10 5 . e o ) 8 l 3 i a m n Tyrrhenian Sea k ( Tectonic settings I s l h a t n p d e a The investigated area belongs to the Calabro-Peloritan Arc which is a part of the Apennine-Maghrebian orogenic belt, along s D 0 the Africa-Europe plate boundary (see Fig. 1). The Messina Strait appears to be the most important of the structural 30 i discontinuities cutting the southern part of the Arc, being a narrow fan-shaped basin that links the Ionian sea to the c 0 t 20 ia ra i no m u a a fe 10 r l ) c t o u r S E u S S. Tyrrhenian sea. It is bounded by high angle normal faults with prevailing N-S to NE-SW orientation, detected on land and C a a- 40 m a n n k N i i n t i a ( t r s l a . a e s C t P d e f r h offshore, active during Pliocene and Pleistocene times (Ghisetti, 1992). The complementary NW striking elements are o a a t a M i a lf L r v b p L u o 20 G la u a e C n ia particularly evident in the Eolian Islands and NE Sicily, contributing to a rather complex structural picture. o l D a i e Fig. 2 - Map view, N-S and E-W cross sections of the t g t g D le e a R c S o studied area with earthquakes located from 1999 to 2007. 30 rm A 30 I llo o e o Black/white boxes indicate seismic stations. 20 n eb til i nt at 10 0 a o tid Y 0 n M n . e 0 S P a 30 8 e x 20 3 a is -10 10 ( 0 Cape S. Alessio km -20 -10 B) 0 ) 0 ) -20 (km 0 0 -30 is 1 0 ax 4 X Data Mt. Etna Cape Taormina 1 0 10 20 b km We analyzed seismicity located in the area of the Messina Strait by using the data recorded by a local network deployed by 15.00 Long. E 16.00 the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia in eastern Sicily and southern Calabria (Figs. 1 and 2) since the 1990's. Our N b 0 data set consists of more than 300 events occurring in the years from 1999 to 2007 and having a magnitude range from 1.0 Fig. 1 - Simplified tectonic map (a) and structural to 3.8 (Fig. 2). sketch map (b) of Sicily and southern Calabria 10 ) m (from Ghisetti, 1992; Lentini et al., 2000; Monaco k ( h and Tortorici, 2000). Red boxes represent the area t Tomography Method 20 p e studied in this paper. Permanent seismic network is D The data set was exploited in a local earthquake tomography, carrying out a simultaneous inversion of both the three- also reported. 30 dimensional velocity structure and the distribution of seismic foci. We applied the “tomoADD” algorithm (Zhang and 30 20 Thurber, 2005), which use a combination of absolute and differential arrival times and a self-adaptative mesh of nodes, 10 Y a 0 30 x 20 based on the ray density. This method is able to produce more accurate event locations and velocity structure near the is -10 10 ( 0 km -20 -10 source region than standard tomography. ) -20 m) -30 is (k X ax E We started the inversion from a regular horizontal grid, with 5x5 km node spacing covering an area of 60x60 km, based on the P and S ray paths (Fig. 3). Unlike the most common tomography methods which use regular three-dimensional grid Fig. 4 - Irregular mesh nodes approaches, the adaptive mesh method, based on tetrahedral and Voronoi diagrams, is able to automatically adapt the Fig. 3 - 3D sketch of P-wave ray paths traced (triangles) for P- (a) and S-waves inversion mesh to match with the data distribution, such that the ray sampling densities on inversion mesh nodes are more in the minimum 1D model (Langer et al., (b) at the final iteration. On the uniform than the regular grid case (Fig. 4). 2007). Earthquakes and seismic stations are bottom, the projection of the mesh indicated by red circles and blue triangles (crosses) and the map of the area respectively. (red contour line) are shown. 2 2 0 10 3 3 a . N Se 8 8 n km S2 cluster a 3 S1 cluster i 3 i C) n c a o e r n 1000 rh u la ia (a) (b) r c o y r S em h u uf T C C. Piale 1000 N Revisited Seismicity . E (a) (b) -S na 750 an N al C ia r 750 Applying the new 3D velocity model to well locatable events we obtain a seismicity pattern e d a 500 a a v Lr ri o u ) b n S1 l a aa li 500 S1 m with a much higher degree of clustering than before (Fig. 5). In particular, we recognize C e ( D o ) S2 i g 250 a t g S2 e t e m c le R ( N N a 250 n c epicenters nicely aligned along the Reggio Calabria-Calanna-S. Eufemia fault and the Armo- e o . S a m t t t r c 0 A s a n a i a L d L t 0 Delianuova fault systems in SW Calabria. We noticed a limiting depth of ca. 20 km for foci in s e o i -250 l v l d e i b lo t te ti t e n a -250 a o id l the area of the Messina Strait. Depth of up to 40 km are found for the events south of the t v M n i e e P t -500 a R l calabrian coast. e -500 R Cape S. Alessio -750 S Well defined clusters of multiplet events (S1 and S2) (Fig 5) are found in the Messina Strait. -750 S -1000 -1000 -750 -500 -250 0 250 500 750 1000 Cape Taormina Ionian Sea -1000 -1000 -750 -500 -250 0 250 500 750 1000 High precision relative location, with the master-event technique, permits to learn more 8 8 7 -1000 -750 -500 -250 0 250 500 750 1000 -1000 -750 -500 -250 0 250 500 750 1000 Relative distance (m) Relative depth (m) . 7 . 7 7 -1000 about the clusters geometry. For S2 we infer a cluster forming a N 30° E striking planar 3 Relative distance (m) Relative depth (m) 3 0 10 30 40 -1000 W E 15.28 Long. E 15.97 Depth (km) element, whereas S1 forms a more stocky body in N-S direction (Figs 6a and 6b).
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