Assessment of water vapor retrievals from a GPS receiver network

We present an assessment of a GPS receiver operational network to produce accurate integrated precipitable water vapour (IPWV) during a two-week field experiment carried out in Central Italy around the city of Rome, where different instruments were operative. This experimental activity provided an excellent opportunity to compare the GPS products with independent measurements provided by ground-based and space-based sensors and to evaluate their quality in terms of absolute accuracy of IPWV, analyzing also the spatial scale of GPS estimates. For instance, the assimilation into Numerical Weather Prediction models of IPWV provided by a GPS network or its exploitation in space geodesy applications to correct tropospheric effects requires an accuracy in the order of 0.1 cm to be ascribed to IPWV observations. In this work, we assessed that the accuracy for GPS IPWV estimates is 0.07 cm. Moreover, this experiment has pointed out strengths and limitations of an operational network for the water vapor estimation, such as a proper receiver distribution to achieve the desired spatial resolution and a coverage of GPS stations in both flat and mountains regions.     

Water quality in New Zealand rivers: current state and trends

River water quality, particularly in lowland catchments, is a matter of concern to the New Zealand public. We assessed river water quality and biological state and trends using data from more than 900 monitoring sites. Parallel state and trend analyses were carried out using all sites and a subset of lowland river sites. Median water-quality state in urban and pastoral land-cover classes was poorer than in exotic forest and natural land-cover classes, and lowland sites in the urban and pastoral classes had the poorest water quality. Nutrient and Escherichia coli concentrations increased and visual clarity and Macroinvertebrate Community Index scores decreased as proportions of catchments in high-intensity agricultural and urban land cover increased. Ten-year trends (2004–2013) indicated recent improvements in ammoniacal nitrogen, dissolved reactive phosphorus and total phosphorus in the pastoral and urban classes, possibly reflecting improved land management. In contrast, trends in nitrate-nitrogen in the exotic forest and cool-dry/pastoral classes indicated worsening conditions.     

Spatio-temporal distribution of seismic activity during the Umbria-Marche crisis, 1997

We present the spatio-temporal distribution of more than 2000 earthquakesthat occurred during the Umbria-Marche seismic crisis, between September 26and November 3, 1997. This distribution was obtained from recordings of atemporary network that was installed after the occurrence of the first two largest shocks (Mw =, 5.7, Mw = 6.0) of September 26. This network wascomposed of 27 digital 3-components stations densely distributed in theepicentral area. The aftershock distribution covers a region of about 40 km long and about2 km wide along the NW-SE central Apennines chain. The activity is shallow,mostly located at less than 9 km depth. We distinguished three main zonesof different seismic activity from NW to SE. The central zone, that containsthe hypocenter of four earthquakes of magnitude larger than 5, was the moreactive and the more complex one. Sections at depth identify 40–50^°dipping structures that agree well with the moment tensor focalmechanisms results. The clustering and the migration of seismicity from NW to SE and the generalfeatures are imaged by aftershock distribution both horizontally and at depth.     

Seismotectonic of Southern Apennines from recent passive seismic experiments

We used data of local earthquakes collected during two recent passive seismic experiments carried out in southern Italy in order to study the seismotectonic setting of the Lucanian Apennine and the surrounding areas. Based on continuous recordings of the temporary stations we extracted over 15,600 waveforms, which were hand-picked along with those recorded by the permanent stations of the Italian national seismic network obtaining a dense, high-quality dataset of P- and S-arrival times. We examined the seismicity occurring in the period 2001–2008 by relocating 566 out of 1047 recorded events with magnitudes M_L ≥ 1.5 and computing 162 fault-plane solutions. Earthquakes were relocated using a minimum one-dimensional velocity model previously obtained for the region and a V_p/V_s ratio of 1.83. Background seismicity is concentrated within the upper crust (between 5 and 20 km of depth) and it is mostly clustered along the Lucanian Apennine chain axis. A significant feature extracted from this study relates to the two E–W trending clusters located in the Potentino and in the Abriola–Pietrapertosa sector (central Lucania region). Hypocentral depths in both clusters are slightly deeper than those observed beneath the Lucanian Apennine. We suggest that these two seismic features are representative of the transition from the inner portion of the chain to the external margin characterized by dextral strike-slip kinematics. In the easternmost part of the study area, below the Bradano foredeep and the Apulia foreland, seismicity is generally deeper and more scattered. The sparse seismicity localized in the Sibari Plain, in the offshore area along the northeastern Calabrian coast and in the Taranto Gulf is also investigated thanks to the new recordings. This seismicity shows hypocenters between 12 and 20 km of depth below the Sibari Plain and is deeper (foci between 10 and 35 km of depth) in the offshore area of the Taranto Gulf. 102 well-constrained fault-plane solutions, showing predominantly normal and strike-slip character with tensional axes (T-axes) generally NE oriented, were selected for the stress tensor analysis. We investigated stress field orientation inverting focal mechanism belonging to the Lucanian Apennine and the Pollino Range, both areas characterized by a more concentrated background seismicity.     

A critical revision of the seismicity of Northern Apulia (Adriatic microplate — Southern Italy) and implicationsfor the identification of seismogenic structures

Northern Apulia is an emerged portion of the Adriatic microplate, representing the foreland–foredeep area of a stretch of the Apennine chain in southern Italy. The interaction between the relatively rigid microplate and the contiguous more deformable domains is responsible for the intense seismicity affecting the chain area. However strong, sometimes even disastrous, earthquakes have also hit northern Apulia on several occasions. The identification of the causative faults of such events is still unclear and different hypotheses have been reported in literature. In order to provide guidelines and constraints in the search for these structures, a comprehensive re-examination and reprocessing of all the available seismic data has been carried out taking into consideration 1) the characteristics of historical events, 2) the accurate relocation of events instrumentally recorded in the last 20 years, 3) the determination of focal mechanisms and of the regional stress tensor.The results obtained bring to light a distinction between the foreland and foredeep areas. In the first region there is evidence of a regional stress combining NW compression and NE extension, thus structures responsible for major earthquakes should be searched for among strike–slip faults, possibly with a slight transpressive character. These structures could be either approximately N–S oriented sinistral or E–W dextral faults. In the foredeep region there is a transition toward transtensive mechanisms, with strikes similar to those of the previous zone, or maybe also towards NW oriented normal faults, more similar to those prevailing in the southern Apennine chain in relation to a dominant NE extension; this appears to be the effect of a reduction of the NW compression, probably due to a decrease in efficiency of stress transmission along the more tectonised border of the Adriatic microplate.     

Constraints on the geodynamic evolution of the AfricaeIberia plate margin across the Gibraltar Strait from seismic tomography

Geophysical studies point to a complex tectonic and geodynamic evolution of the Alboran Basin and Gulf of Cadiz. Tomographic images show strong seismic waves velocity contrasts in the upper mantle. The...     

Passive Seismology and Deep Structure in Central Italy

—In the last decade temporary teleseismic transects have become a powerful tool for investigating the crustal and upper mantle structure. In order to gain a clearer picture of the lithosphere-asthenosphere structure in peninsular Italy, between 1994 and 1996, we have deployed three teleseismic transects in northern, central, and southern Apennines, in the framework of the project GeoModAp (European Community contract EV5V-CT94–0464). Some hundreds of teleseisms were recorded at each deployment which lasted between 3 and 4 months. Although many analyses are still in progress, the availability of this high quality data allowed us to refine tomographic images of the lithosphere-asthenosphere structure with an improved resolution in the northern and central Apennines, and to study the deformation of the upper mantle looking at seismic anisotropy through shear-wave splitting analysis. Also, a study of the depth and geometry of the Moho through the receiver function technique is in progress. Tomographic results from the northernmost 1994 and the central 1995 teleseismic experiments confirm that a high-velocity anomaly (HVA) does exist in the upper 200–250 km and is confined to the northern Apenninic arc. This HVA, already interpreted as a fragment of subducted lithosphere is better defined by the new temporary data, compared to previous works, based only on data from permanent stations. No clear high-velocity anomalies are detected in the upper 250 km below the central Apennines, suggesting either a slab window due to a detachment below southern peninsular Italy, or a thinner, perhaps continental slab of Adriatic lithosphere not detectable by standard tomography. We found clear evidence of seismic anisotropy in the uppermost mantle, related to the main tectonic processes which affected the studied regions, either NE–SW compressional deformation of the lithosphere beneath the mountain belt, or arc-parallel asthenospheric flow (both giving NW–SE fast polarization direction), and successive extensional deformation (～E–W trending) in the back-arc basin of northern Tyrrhenian and Tuscany. Preliminary results of receiver function studies in the northern Apennines show that the Moho depth is well defined in the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic regions while its geometry underneath the mountain belt is not yet well constrained, due to the observed high complexity.