Investigation of pre-1700 Earthquakes Between the Adda and the Middle Adige River Basins (Southern Alps) - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 89

1 Introduction

The seismicity of the Southern Alps is rather high, in terms of both frequency of
occurrence and energy released per event, in the Eastern sector, corresponding to
the Veneto and Friuli regions; then, it decreases towards West up to the Adda River.
Further west, the Southern Alps are almost aseismic. In the sector between the
Lessini Mts. and Eastern Friuli, the damaging earthquakes are clustered in a well
defined seismic belt, where seismogenic sources responsible for earthquakes with
Mw 6 have been defined in recent works (Galadini et al., 2005; Burrato et al.,

in press). In contrast, the knowledge of the Southalpine sector West of this area is
sparser (Fig. 1). The area experienced some earthquakes with Mw

≥

> 5 . 5 and varied

events with 4 5 whose distribution is, apparently, random.

This paper first reviews the main results of the investigation performed until 1995
in a domain roughly comprised between the basins of the Adda River to the West
and the middle Adige River to the East (Section 2). The review includes material
which received little or no consideration before. Then the paper reviews the most
recent investigation and the present knowledge of the seismicity in the same domain
(Section 3). In particular, it discusses the reliability of the available information of
the events before 1700, including new historical findings, comments to the available
interpretation and archaeological indication of past earthquake damage.

. 8 ≤ Mw ≤ 5 .

Fig. 1 Seismicity (Mw ≥ 4 . 5) of the Southern Alps from the catalogue CPTI04 (CPTI Working
Group, 2004) in the time-window 1000-2002. The box shows the study area