Seismogenic faulting, moment release patterns and seismic hazard along the central and southern Apennines and the Calabrian arc

Abstract

The earthquake history of Italy is not just a history of ruined cities and people struggling to revive their environment; the distribution of the population, the abandonment and relocation of many settlements, the development and enforcement of modern town-planning rules, the creation of new architectural styles, and even the distribution of dialects can sometimes be blamed on the occurrence of a large earthquake. Although Italian earthquakes may not be the largest ever spawned by Earth, they contribute significantly to the development of seismology as a science. Important milestones, such as the following, in the earthquake history of the peninsula testify to this:

Gargano promontory, 1627. A catastrophic earthquake motivated the first systematic survey on the effects of earthquakes on the human environment, and led to the first isoseismic map (a map showing isoseismals, that is, lines connecting localities that experienced the same earthquake intensity level).