arXiv subjects

Gaetano Festa

Publications and source records attributed to Gaetano Festa.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Enhanced Seismicity Monitoring in the Rapid Scientific Response to the 2025 Santorini Crisis

We used a deep learning workflow to enhance earthquake detection during the 2025 seismic unrest between Santorini and Amorgos islands to track the evolution of the crisis in near real-time. We analysed the continuous seismic waveforms daily (1/2 - 3/3/25) as the crisis unfolded. Our analysis enhanced the earthquake catalogue from around 4,000 to 80,000 earthquakes. The enhanced catalogue allowed this international expert group to identify the volcanic-tectonic character, clearly revealing burst-like, spasmodic seismicity swarms, which is a pattern associated with fluid-driven processes from early stages of the crisis. Detailed moment tensor inversions in early events characterised by a significant non-double couple component indicated the involvement of magmatic or high-pressure hydrothermal fluids driving the unrest. Concurrent DL-enhanced tomography efforts identified a third, deep magmatic reservoir beneath Anydros Islet, consistent with pressure-driven processes. To date, volcanic-tectonic swarms in which >200 earthquakes of ML > 4 occurred within only a few weeks, largely within episodic bursts of seismicity, have not been observed elsewhere.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2019

Self-similarity of low-frequency earthquakes

Low-frequency earthquakes are a particular class of slow earthquakes that provide a unique source of information on the mechanical properties of a subduction zone during the preparation of large earthquakes. Despite increasing detection of these events in recent years, their source mechanisms are still poorly characterised, and the relation between their magnitude and size remains controversial. Here, we present the source characterisation of more than 10,000 low-frequency earthquakes that occurred during tremor sequences in 2012-2016 along the Nankai subduction zone in western Shikoku, Japan. We show that the seismic moment versus corner frequency scaling for these events is compatible with an inverse of the cube law, as widely observed for regular earthquakes. Our result is thus consistent with shear rupture as the source mechanism for low-frequency earthquakes, and suggests that they obey to a similar physics of regular earthquakes, with self-similar rupture process and constant stress drop. Furthermore, when investigating the dependence of the stress drop value on the rupture speed, we found that low-frequency earthquakes might propagate at lower rupture velocity than regular earthquakes, releasing smaller stress drop.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2019

A probabilistic method for the estimation of earthquake source parameters from spectral inversion : application to the 2016-2017 Central Italy seismic sequence

We develop a probabilistic framework based on the conjunction of states of information between data and model, to jointly retrieve earthquake source parameters and anelastic attenuation factor from inversion of displacement amplitude spectra. The evaluation of the joint probability density functions (PDFs) enables us to take into account between-parameter correlations in the final estimates of the parameters and related uncertainties. Following this approach, we first search for the maximum of the a-posteriori PDF through the basin hopping technique that couples a global exploration built on a Markov chain with a local deterministic maximization. Then we compute statistical indicators (mean, variance and correlation coefficients) on source parameters and anelastic attenuation through integration of the PDF in the vicinity of the maximum likelihood solution. Definition of quality criteria based on the signal to noise ratio and the similarity of the marginal PDFs with a Gaussian function enable us to define the frequency domain for the inversion and to get rid of unconstrained solutions. We perform synthetic tests to assess theoretical correlations as a function of the signal to noise ratio and to define the minimum bandwidth around the corner frequency for consistent parameter resolution. As an application, we finally estimate the source parameters for the 2016-2017 Central Italy seismic sequence. We found that the classical scaling between the seismic moment and the corner frequency holds, with an average stress drop of $Δσ$ = 2.1 +- 0.3 MPa. However, the main events in the sequence exhibit a stress drop larger than the average value. Finally, the small seismic efficiency indicates a stress overshoot, possibly due to dynamic effects or large frictional efficiency.

physics.geo-ph↗