The QUIN project

This is a guest post by Simone Bello from the Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzio Chieti e Pescara, Italy.

The QUIN project (QUaternary fault strain INdicators database) stems from the initiative of a group of researchers to make the structural-geological data of the potentially seismogenic faults cropping out along the entire Apennines in Italy available to the scientific community.

Strain and regional stress databases of active deformation patterns are largely available in the literature but are almost exclusively derived from earthquakes and geodetic data. However, in areas such as Italy, where the regional stress field has remained unchanged over the last few million years, the analysis of structural data relevant for seismogenic purposes can be extended at least to the overall Quaternary time interval. QUIN was born with this assumption. It is designed to integrate, unify, and elaborate high-detailed geologic information on potentially seismogenic faults and provides data on the location, attitude, kinematics, and deformation axes of Fault Striation Pairs (FSPs) measured along Quaternary faults.

The data

Though not previously published, parts of the QUIN’s data have been collected over the years or recently acquired for the project. Parts are derived from a systematic collection of the literature. The first release, QUIN 1.0 (Lavecchia et al., 2022), contained 3,339 fault/striation pairs mapped across 445 structural sites exposed along Quaternary faults in central Italy. The recent second release, QUIN 2.0, (Lavecchia et al., 2024), has expanded this coverage to include further 4,297 fault/striation pairs measured across 738 structural sites in southern Italy (the data can be downloaded directly from the QR codes reported in Figure 1).

The two combined databases provide data on more than 7500 FSP surveyed in ~1,200 structural sites along the extent of Peninsular Italy for about 1000 km from northern Tuscany to Sicily, thus providing a comprehensive description of the geometric-kinematic structure of the Italian country (The data distribution is reported in Figure 2).

We developed a MATLAB in-sequence combination of algorithms to derive deformation and strain parameters to obtain all the geometrical-kinematic information on the fault/slip data in just one export. The MATLAB code is deposited in the Zenodo online repository with a guide-to-use and can be freely downloaded (Andrenacci et al., 2021).

Together with the QUIN’s punctual data, hosted in Pangaea (Lavecchia et al., 2021) and Zenodo (Lavecchia et al., 2023) repositories, an original shapefile of the fault traces hosting the data for both releases has been made available on the Zenodo repository (Lavecchia et al., 2021 and 2023) and are free-to-use (Figure 1).

The QUINs database represents a notable advancement in seismotectonic research by offering a detailed insight into deformation patterns, especially in the Apennine regions of Italy, where earthquake data may be fragmented or incomplete. Thanks to the QUIN project, the scientific community can now access more comprehensive information on Quaternary faults, including their location, attitude, kinematics, and principal axes of deformation, facilitating the understanding of surface faulting.

The future

In the future, the two QUIN databases will be integrated for a comprehensive formal stress inversion analysis and regional comparison with seismological and geodetic data. This is particularly important in high seismic potential regions such as central and southern Italy, where understanding active deformation processes is crucial for seismic risk prevention and mitigation.

The creation and sharing of databases like QUIN reflect a significant shift in how the scientific community approaches seismotectonic research, encouraging collaboration and open data sharing to accelerate progress in understanding seismic processes. Indeed, by integrating geological and seismological knowledge, we can better prepare ourselves for future seismic events.

With QUIN we have produced one of the most comprehensive databases of this type worldwide. Our data and methodological approach will be useful to structural geologists, geomorphologists, and geophysicists interested in active tectonics.

The QUIN research project has involved CRUST researchers (https://www.crust.unich.it/) and colleagues from the University of London and INGV (https://www.ingv.it/). Our future goal is to extend the QUIN project to other areas of the world. Researchers interested in collaborating to reach this goal are invited to contact us!

 

REFERENCES

• Andrenacci C., Bello S., de Nardis R., Lavecchia G. (2021). Fault-Striation Pair Analysis (F-SPA) Tool. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5603992
• Lavecchia G., Bello, S., Andrenacci C., Cirillo D., Ferrarini F., Vicentini N., de Nardis R., Brozzetti F. (2021). QUaternary fault strain INdicators database: QUIN 1.0 – first release from the Apennines of central Italy. PANGAEA, https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.934802
• Lavecchia G., Bello, S., Andrenacci C., Cirillo D., Ferrarini F., Vicentini N., de Nardis R., Brozzetti F. (2021). Host Faults Database of Central Italy [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5603004
• Lavecchia G., Bello S., Andrenacci C., Cirillo D., Ferrarini F., Vicentini N., de Nardis R., Roberts G., Brozzetti F. (2022). QUaternary fault strain INdicators database – QUIN 1.0 – first release from the Apennines of central Italy. Scientific Data, 9:204. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01311-8
• Lavecchia G., Bello S., Andrenacci C., Cirillo D., Pietrolungo F., Talone D., Ferrarini F., de Nardis R, Galli P., Faure Walker J., Sgambato C., Menichetti M., Monaco C., Gambino S., De Guidi G., Barreca G., Carnemolla F., Brighenti F., Giuffrida S., Carboni F., Ferranti L., Valoroso L., Toscani G., Barchi M. R., Roberts G., Brozzetti F. (2023). QUIN 2.0 – new release of the QUaternary fault strain INdicators database from the Southern Apennines of Italy. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8414734
• Lavecchia G., Bello S., Andrenacci A., Cirillo D., Pietrolungo F., Talone D., Ferrarini F., de Nardis R., Galli P., Faure Walker J., Sgambato C., Menichetti M., Monaco C., Gambino S., De Guidi G., Barreca G., Carnemolla F., Brighenti F., Giuffrida F., Carboni F., Ferranti L., Valoroso L., Toscani G., Barchi M.R., Roberts G., Brozzetti F. (2024). QUIN 2.0 – new release of the Quaternary fault strain INdicators database from the Southern Apennines of Italy. Scientific Data, 11:189. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03008-6 Lavecchia G., Bello S., Cirillo D., Pietrolungo F., Brozzetti F. (2023) Quaternary-Host Faults Database 2.0 (Southern Italy). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8414480