Description: Il Monte Amiata, ubicato nella porzione sud-occidentale della regione Toscana, è un edificio vulcanico che si è strutturato durante la parte finale del Pleistocene medio (350 - 200 ka; Laurenzi et al., 2015; Principe et al., 2018) al di sopra delle unità tettoniche strutturatesi durante le fasi mio-plioceniche dell’orogenesi appenninica. La distribuzione dei centri eruttivi sembra essere controllata da una zona di debolezza strutturale plio-pleistocenica, orientata circa NE-SW, che interessa sia i depositi vulcanici che le unità strutturali sottostanti (Brogi & Fabbrini, 2009, Brogi et al., 2015; Piccardi et al., 2017, Principe et al., 2018). Il gradiente geotermico è caratterizzato da valori molto alti (fino a 15°/100m), rendendo l’area particolarmente idonea per la produzione di energia geotermica. La produzione geotermica iniziò a partire dal 1960. Attualmente, gli impianti produttivi di ENEL- Greenpower di Bagnore e Piancastagnaio (Fig. 1), sfruttano un serbatoio geotermico collocato tra i 2000 e i 3500 metri di profondità rispetto al piano campagna. Il Catalogo Parametrico dei Terremoti Italiani (CPTI; Rovida et al., 2016 riporta, tra il 1287 e il 1940, 13 terremoti con una magnitudo equivalente compresa tra 4.5 £ Me £ 5.3 che hanno causato danneggiamenti fino al grado VIII MCS (Fig. 1), evidenziando un’attività sismica naturale e capace di causare seri danneggiamenti, ben prima dell’inizio dello sfruttamento geotermico dell’area. La sismicità recente, registrata dalla rete sismica nazionale dell’INGV (Castello et al., 2006; http://cnt.rm.ingv.it), riporta meno di 150 terremoti nell’area amiatina negli ultimi 25 anni, di cui 35 eventi con ML ≥ 1.5. Tra questi, il terremoto del 1.4.2000 (Md=4.0; http://cnt.rm.ingv.it/event/1132509) causò danni ad oltre 50 edifici, e la prossimità dell’epicentro con l’impianto di produzione di Piancastagnaio sollevò l’ipotesi di una sua natura antropogenica (Mucciarelli et al. 2001). Braun et al. (2018) hanno ricalcolato ipocentro e meccanismo focale di questo evento, collocandolo ad una profondità prossima al serbatoio di produzione, giungendo però alla conclusione che non sia possibile, per questa via, discriminare la sua natura antropogenica o meno. In generale, rispetto alle profondità tipiche della sismicità crostale osservata in Toscana (tra circa 5 e 13 km) gli ipocentri degli eventi sismici registrati nell’area amiatina hanno delle profondità simili a quelle di produzione (〈 5 km). La bassa densità della rete di monitoraggio INGV in quest’area del territorio nazionale (Fig. 1) è causa, comunque, di una bassa capacità di rilevazione (detection) sismica e di una altrettanto bassa capacità di risoluzione ipocentrale. Per migliorare le capacità di detection e di monitoraggio sismico nell’area del Monte Amiata, nel periodo 2015 - 2018 abbiamo installato una rete locale composta da 8 stazioni in vicinanza delle centrali di produzione geotermica di Bagnore e Piancastagnaio. L’obiettivo dell’esperimento era quello di abbassare la magnitudo di completezza e di comprendere meglio l’origine della sismicità in vicinanza degli impianti di estrazione, cercando di discriminare tra sismicità naturale e eventi sismici antropogenici. A questo scopo, abbiamo applicato una metodologia di analisi automatica, scansionando l’enorme dataset con un nuovo e robusto approccio di detection e localizzazione, chiamato waveform beam-forming grid search approach (LASSIE; Heimann et al., 2017). In uno step successivo, gli eventi sismici associati vengono rilocalizzati con un waveform-based locator (LOKI: Grigoli et al. 2014). Il catalogo sismico così ottenuto, aggiornato e molto più completo rispetto a quanto mai ottenuto prima in termini di Magnitudo di completezza (Mc), rappresenta la base per definire criteri di discriminazione, ad esempio attraverso la correlazione spazio-temporale della sismicità osservata con i parametri di produzione geotermica. I risultati ottenuti e le potenzialità di tale approccio saranno oggetto della presentazione qui proposta.

Description: Unpublished

Description: Roma

Description: 1TR. Georisorse

Description: On October 27, 2017, an Mw 4 earthquake occurred close to the municipality of Montesano sulla Marcellana, less than 10 km external to the concession of the largest European onshore hydrocarbon reservoir—the Val d’Agri oilfield (Southern Italy). Being a weak event located outside the extended monitoring domain of the industrial concession, the relevance of this earthquake and the possible links with the hydrocarbon exploitation were not extensively discussed. Actually, the analysis of shallow seismic events close to subsurface exploitation domains plays a significant role in the definition of key parameters in order to discriminate between natural, triggered, and induced seismicity, especially in tectonically active regions. The study of weak-to-moderate earthquakes can improve the characterization of the potentially destructive seismic hazard of this particular area, already struck by M 〉 6.5 episodes in the past. In this work, we analyze the source parameters of this Mw 4 earthquake by applying advanced seismological techniques to estimate the uncertainties derived from the moment tensor inversion and identify plausible directivity effects. The moment tensor is dominated by a NW–SE oriented normal faulting with a centroid depth of 14 km. A single ML 2.1 aftershock was recorded and used as the empirical Green’s function to calculate the apparent source time function for the mainshock. Apparent durations (in the range 0.11–0.21 s, obtained from S-waves) define an azimuthal pattern, which reveals an asymmetric bilateral rupture with 70% of the rupture propagation in the N310°Wdirection, suggesting a rupture plane dipping to the SW. Our results tally with the activation of a deeper fault segment associated with the Eastern Agri Fault System close to the basement as the origin of the Montesano earthquake. Finally, the Coulomb stress rate induced by depletion of the oilfield is calculated to quantify the trigger potential estimated for the Montesano earthquake yielding relatively low probabilities below 10%. Our analyses point toward the conclusion that the Mw 4 event was more likely due to the local natural tectonic stress, rather than induced or triggered by the long-term hydrocarbon extraction in the Val d’Agri oilfield.

Description: Published

Description: 617794

Description: 3T. Fisica dei terremoti e Sorgente Sismica

Description: JCR Journal

Description: Mt. Amiata (Tuscany, Italy) is an extinct volcano whose last eruptive activity was dated about 200 ky ago. Today, its underlying crustal volume is still characterized by a high geothermal gradient, which makes the area particularly suitable for geothermal exploitation. Seismicity in the Tuscan Geothermal Areas is generally observed within the upper crust and is confined in depth by the so called K-horizon, a strong seismic reflector located in between 4-8 km b.s.l., often interpreted as the 400°C isotherme. The overlaying structure presents permeable layers of highly fractured volcanic rocks, saturated with hot water and steam. Geothermal exploitation from these layers started in the 1960's. Since then, shallow earthquakes have been occasionally observed close to the geothermal wells, and the question is whether these event are of natural origin or related to the exploitation of heat. To monitor the seismic activity inside the geothermal field of Mt. Amiata, we installed in 2015 a dedicated 8-station seismic network in the vicinity of the productive geothermal power plants for a 3-years recording period. The main challenges of our experiment are to automatically detect and locate the local microseismicity, trying to discriminate from natural seismicity those events caused by human operations. Due to the strong regional seismic activity of the 2016 Central Italy sequence, the automatic detection of local seismic events resulted challenging. We therefore use a waveform based detector (Lassie, developed at GFZ) to quickly scan the large dataset and automatically detect weak events in the target volume. Lassie provides preliminary event locations, which are then refined in a second step, using standard and waveform based techniques. For those hypocenters that are located close to the geothermal power plants, at a similar depth as the production level (3500 m b.s.l.), it remains very challenging to discriminate between natural and anthropogenic events.

Description: Published

Description: Seattle (WA)

Description: 4T. Sismicità dell'Italia

Description: This article has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Journal International ©: The Authors 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.

Description: ectonic earthquake swarms challenge our understanding of earthquake processes since it is difficult to link observations to the underlying physical mechanisms and to assess the hazard they pose. Transient forcing is thought to initiate and drive the spatio-temporal release of energy during swarms. The nature of the transient forcing may vary across sequences and range from aseismic creeping or transient slip to diffusion of pore pressure pulses to fluid redistribution and migration within the seismogenic crust. Distinguishing between such forcing mechanisms may be critical to reduce epistemic uncertainties in the assessment of hazard due to seismic swarms, because it can provide information on the frequency–magnitude distribution of the earthquakes (often deviating from the assumed Gutenberg–Richter relation) and on the expected source parameters influencing the ground motion (for example the stress drop). Here we study the ongoing Pollino range (Southern Italy) seismic swarm, a long-lasting seismic sequence with more than five thousand events recorded and located since October 2010. The two largest shocks (magnitude M w = 4.2 and M w = 5.1) are among the largest earthquakes ever recorded in an area which represents a seismic gap in the Italian historical earthquake catalogue. We investigate the geometrical, mechanical and statistical characteristics of the largest earthquakes and of the entire swarm. We calculate the focal mechanisms of the M l 〉 3 events in the sequence and the transfer of Coulomb stress on nearby known faults and analyse the statistics of the earthquake catalogue. We find that only 25 per cent of the earthquakes in the sequence can be explained as aftershocks, and the remaining 75 per cent may be attributed to a transient forcing. The b-values change in time throughout the sequence, with low b-values correlated with the period of highest rate of activity and with the occurrence of the largest shock. In the light of recent studies on the palaeoseismic and historical activity in the Pollino area, we identify two scenarios consistent with the observations and our analysis: This and past seismic swarms may have been ‘passive’ features, with small fault patches failing on largely locked faults, or may have been accompanied by an ‘active’, largely aseismic, release of a large portion of the accumulated tectonic strain. Those scenarios have very different implications for the seismic hazard of the area.

Description: Published

Description: 1553–1567

Description: 4T. Sismicità dell'Italia

Description: JCR Journal

Description: Since hydrofracking is used for shale gas production, human caused seismicity have become a subject of increasing interest. Seismic monitoring is common for earthquakes generated by human operations like mining, reservoir impoundments, hydrocarbon and geothermal production, as well as reinjection of fluids. In Italy the Mw6.1 Reggio-Emilia earthquake of 20 May 2012 triggered particular interest in anthropogenic seismicity. It also raised the question of whether hydrocarbon exploitation induced variations in crustal stress that influenced the generation of these earthquakes. The Italian government commissioned a technical report compiling cases of documented and hypothesized anthropogenic seismicity. Following a governmental request, a technical report was compiled, describing the relation between anthropogenic activities and induced or triggered seismicity in Italy. This paper reviews these cases, on the basis of previously published works, and additional new analyses. Three cases of seismicity in Central Italy, occurring close to anthropogenic activities, are: (i) extraction of carbon dioxide (CO_2) from a borehole near Pieve Santo Stefano, (ii) the impoundment of the Montedoglio reservoir and (iii) geothermal energy production at Mt. Amiata. Since the sites are situated in the seismically active area of the Northern Apennines, we illustrate both by standard seismological analysis as well as by modeling to tackle the challenge of discriminating anthropogenic from natural seismicity.

Description: Published

Description: 80-94

Description: 5T. Sismologia, geofisica e geologia per l'ingegneria sismica

Description: JCR Journal

Description: In a joint project called OMEGA, between GFZ-Potsdam and the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), an experimental seismic monitoring system was installed in 2015 near the power plants of the geothermal area of Mt. Amiata (central Italy). The main objectives of this three-year experiment are: i) to monitor the seismic activity connected to any type of seismicity inside the geothermal field, ii) to verify if the low local seismicity rate near Mt. Amiata reported by the INGV bulletin is natural, or due to the sparse distribution of the INGV network, and iii) to discriminate natural from possibly induced seismicity. The eight-station network was extended by a sevenelement seismic array for the first four weeks. The aim of this paper is to present the first automatic hypocentre locations of the joint network/array analysis.

Description: Published

Description: 231-242

Description: 1TR. Georisorse

Description: JCR Journal

Description: In Italy the discussion about anthropogenic seismicity started after the deadly M6 Emilia earthquakes in 2012. Occurring these events in an area of gas and oil production, the question raised, whether exploitation induced crustal stress variations that could have influenced the generation of these events. In 2014 the Government published monitoring guidelines (MGL) describing regulations regarding hydrocarbon extraction, waste-water injection and CO2 storage. The MGL prescribe the monitoring of pore pressure, microseismicity and ground deformation near sites of industrial activity and direct the application of a four-stage traffic light protocol. INGV has been charged to apply the MGL in three test areas and to provide indications about the applicability of these guidelines. We give a general overview about the state of the art, trying to emphasize critical situations as e.g. problems in magnitude calculation or traffic light thresholds, especially in areas with multiple mining rights.

Description: Published

Description: Banff, Alberta, Canada

Description: 1IT. Reti di monitoraggio

Description: The crustal volume beneath Mt. Amiata is characterized by a high geothermal gradient, which makes the area particularly suitable for geothermal exploitation. Seismicity in the Tuscan Geothermal Areas is generally observed within the upper crust and is confined in depth by the K-horizon, a strong seismic reflector located in between 4-8 km b.s.l., often interpreted as the 400°C isotherme. The overlaying structure presents permeable layers of highly fractured volcanic rocks, saturated with hot water and steam. Geothermal exploitation from these layers started in the 1960's. Since then, shallow earthquakes have been occasionally observed close to the geothermal wells, and the question is whether these event are of natural origin or related to the exploitation of heat. To monitor the seismic activity inside the geothermal field of Mt. Amiata, we installed in 2015 a dedicated 8-station seismic network in the vicinity of the productive geothermal power plants for a 3-years recording period. The main challenges of our experiment are to automatically detect and locate the local microseismicity, trying to discriminate from natural seismicity those events caused by human operations. We use a waveform based detector to quickly scan the large dataset and automatically detect weak events in the target volume, providing also preliminary event locations, which are then refined in a second step, using standard and waveform based techniques. For hypocenters located close to the geothermal power plants, at a similar depth as the production level (3500 m b.s.l.), it remains very challenging to discriminate between natural and anthropogenic events.

Description: Published

Description: Perugia

Description: 4T. Sismicità dell'Italia