FAULTS IN THE BASIN FUCINO

FAULTS IN THE BASIN FUCINO

Fucino is a basin of tectonic origin, that is an intermontana depression whose formation is related to the activity of faults over millions of years. Practically , the repeated movements along these fractures of the earth’s crust have resulted the lowering of the basin sector e the relative raising of margins depression. That’s the reason for which the physiography of the Fucense area is characterized by the area of ​​the former lake and the surrounding mountainous reliefs. The activity of the faults created the conditions, with continuous lowering of the pelvis, for the progressive stacking of an enormous thickness of continental sediments: about 1,400 meters in the north-east sector, where the marine substrate it is deeper. Basically, the geological history of the Lake Fucino is largely an effect of the activity of the faults and, without these, the basin would not have existed as a reality physiography. The evolution of the landscape in his various stages is predominantly the result of the movements of the faults known as San Benedetto dei Marsi-Gioia dei Marsi, of the Marsicana Regional Road, Aielli sector (San Vittorino, La Foce, Colle Felicetta), of I Tre Monti, Monte Velino – Monti della Magnola, Monte Parasano, Trasacco and Luco dei Marsi.

THE PALEOSEISMOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS

  The activity over the last millennia of the San Benedetto dei Marsi – Gioia dei Marsi faults, of the S.R. Marsicana and Trasacco is demonstrated by the dislocation of deposits from the Holocene period. This emerged clearly from the analyzes paleoseismological , which largely in the during the nineties were conducted along these faults, by surveying and the dating of the sediments emerging on the walls of geognostic trenches or excavations, arried out for the laying of pipes. Fourteen sites analyzed in the Piana del Fucino provided information on individual events of dislocation, i.e. on single movements corresponding to as many seismic events. Overall it was possible to establish that the faults mentioned above have produced surface faulting on the occasion of earthquake of 1915 and six other Holocene events. The same research established that the interval time between these earthquakes varies between approximately 1,400 and 2,600 years.