Seismic deformation in the Adriatic Sea region

Abstract

We present an overall analysis of the recent seismic activity occurred in the Adriatic Sea region, a strongly debated sector of the Mediterranean area, where several authors have proposed different models of plate configuration and kinematics. In the past, seismic investigations of this marine area have been strongly hampered by non-optimal network geometries, but data quality increase and recent methodological improvements lay the groundwork to attempt more accurate analyses including proper evaluations of result reliability. On these grounds, we investigated the seismic activity of the last decades by means of new hypocenter locations, waveform inversion focal mechanisms and seismogenic stress fields. We used the Bayloc non-linear probabilistic algorithm to compute hypocenter locations for the most relevant seismic sequences by carefully evaluating location quality and seismolineaments reliability. We also provided an updated database of waveform inversion focal mechanisms including original solutions estimated by applying the waveform inversion method Cut And Paste and data available from official catalogs. Then, focal mechanism solutions have been used to estimate seismogenic stress fields through different inversion algorithms. Seismic results indicate a relevant degree of fragmentation and different patterns of deformation in the Central Adriatic region. In particular, our analyses depicted two NW-SE oriented, adjacent volumes: (i) a pure compressive domain with NNE-trending axis of maximum compression characterizes the northeastern volume where the seismic activity occurs on W-to-NW oriented seismic sources; (ii) a transpressive domain with NW-trending axis of maximum compression characterizes the southwestern sector where thrust faulting preferentially occurs on ENE-to-NE oriented planes and strike-slip faulting on E-W ones. Joint evaluation of seismic findings of the present study and kinematic models proposed in the literature indicates just in the Central Adriatic region the presence of a broad deformation zone, accommodating a still evolving fragmentation of the Adriatic domain in two blocks rotating in opposite directions. On these grounds, the obtained results not only furnish new seismological evidence supporting the "two-blocks model" proposed by previous authors, but they also provide additional constraints, useful for better understanding and modeling the seismotectonic processes occurring in the Adriatic region.

Data availability

Data used in the present study were collected from catalogs and bibliographic sources indicated in detail in the article. Waveform inversions performed in this study used data available in the database EIDA, http://orfeus-eu.org/webdc3/ (accessed February 2022)