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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 29, NO. 24, 2219, doi:10.1029/2002GL016027, 2002

Slow rupture of an aseismic fault in a seismogenic region of Central Italy

Antonella Amoruso

Dipartimento di Fisica, Università dell'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy, and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Gruppo Collegato dell'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy


Luca Crescentini

Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Camerino, Camerino, Italy, and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Assergi(AQ), Italy


Andrea Morelli

Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Roma, Italy


Roberto Scarpa

Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Salerno, Salerno, Italy


Abstract

Slow earthquakes and afterslips prove that the Earth does not have just two response time scales, i.e. that of tectonic loading and that of regular earthquakes. A swarm of slow earthquakes, with time constants of the order of hundreds of seconds, has been detected by a laser interferometer below the Gran Sasso massif (Italy). We analyse and model these observations to identify a very plausible source in a local fault, with no historic seismic behavior. While slow earthquakes occurring in subduction zones, and at the transition between locked and stably sliding segments of the San Andreas fault, are often associated with seismic events, in the case of the Apennines there is no correlation between local seismicity and slow earthquakes. Slow earthquakes, therefore, may also represent a specific failure behavior for a seismically locked fault, adding further complexity to the interpretation of geologic data for seismic hazard estimates.

Published 27 December 2002.

Index Terms: 7209 Seismology: Earthquake dynamics and mechanics; 7223 Seismology: Seismic hazard assessment and prediction; 7230 Seismology: Seismicity and seismotectonics.

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Citation: Amoruso, A., L. Crescentini, A. Morelli, and R. Scarpa (2002), Slow rupture of an aseismic fault in a seismogenic region of Central Italy, Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(24), 2219, doi:10.1029/2002GL016027.