Seismic and volcanic activity during 2014 in the region involved by TOMO-ETNA seismic active experiment

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the seismic and volcanic activity occurred during 2014 in the region involved by the TOMO-ETNA seismic active experiment (Mt. Etna, Aeolian Islands and Peloritani-Messina Strait areas). To better characterize the seismicity over the year, three-dimensional hypocenter locations and focal mechanism solutions of a dataset of 678 selected small-to-moderate magnitude earthquakes (0.5 ≤ ML ≤ 4.3) were analyzed. In the framework of the TOMO-ETNA experiment, a temporary seismic network was installed on-land from June to November 2014, both to acquire seismic signals produced by shots and to record the local seismicity. Data collected by the temporary network were used to integrate those deriving from the permanent seismic network operated by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)-Osservatorio Etneo (Etna Observatory), thus obtaining a numerically more robust dataset. In agreement with previous analysis and studies, the distribution of the hypocentral locations is well representative of the seismicity that typically characterizes this area. The selected well-constrained 42 fault plane solutions evidence two domains characterized by different motions and style of deformation. In particular, an extensional domain in the northeastern Sicily and a strike-slip regime in the northernmost part of the studied region have been observed.

Keywords

• Sicily
• Seismicity
• TOMO-ETNA experiment
• Volcanic activity