From Faults to Forecasts: Understanding Earthquake Behaviour and Variability - Public Lecture

It will probably come as no surprise to any geologist that earthquakes and tectonic faults are highly variable and complex phenomena. Active (and inactive) faults rarely occur in isolation and have variable geometries, kinematics, and slip rates. This fact, coupled with fault interaction, means that earthquakes are variably distributed in time and space over tectonically active regions. These complexities contribute to some of the challenges associated with probabilistic seismic hazard assessment. In this talk, Dr Zoë Mildon will mostly focus on the insights we can gain about normal faulting and earthquake behaviour from the central Apennines of Italy, and how our results can be used to inform potential variability and therefore uncertainties in other tectonically active regions.

Central Italy is an ideal place to study normal faulting and earthquakes, as there is a nearly 700 year record of damaging earthquakes and the normal faults are well exposed as bedrock scarps at the surface. There have been recent damaging earthquakes, including the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake (famous for a group a scientists being convicted, and then acquitted of manslaughter) and the 2016 Amatrice earthquake sequence. Using a combination of fieldwork, geochemistry and physics-based numerical modelling, results from central Italy can be used to explore fault interaction, earthquake behaviour and seismic hazard.