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Eastern Sicily is an area where some of the most catastrophic earthquakes in Italian history occurred. As reported by historical sources, these earthquakes induced liquefaction phenomena. In two areas along the Ionian coast of Sicily we found liquefaction evidence in Holocene deposits. In the Minissale site (east of Mount Etna), the observed liquefaction features can be related to the 1169 and 1693 earthquakes, while in the Agnone site (south of Catania), the deformational structures can be tentatively associated to the 1542 and 1693 events. Both sites locate in areas where historical liquefaction has been observed in the past, thus confirming the actual liquefaction susceptibility/potential in this region. The evidence of repeated liquefaction events at the same site, highlights the relevance of the paleoseismic approach for modeling the recurrence time and preparing scenarios of seismic effects in eastern Sicily, where seismogenic sources are scantly defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant and partly forgotten series of earthquakes located in the Gargano area (Southern Italy) between 1646 and 1688 AD is critically revised, in the light of newly discovered historical records derived from non local contemporary serial sources (early newspapers and diplomatic reports). The revision is conducted in the frame of a survey of the current state of knowledge on historical Gargano seismicity. Hypotheses on the seismotectonic effects of the evente and their influences on the evaluation of local seismic hazard are also proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of different numerical analyses (nonlinear dynamic FEM simulations) regarding the monumental buildings in Ripabottoni village (Campobasso, southern Italy), which were damaged by the 2002 Molise earthquake. In particular, the church of S. Maria Assunta, for which typological data and an exhaustive damage survey are available, is taken into account. Some preliminary studies [Spallarossa et al., 2004], which correlate the waveform of the available recordings from aftershocks and the surveyed damage mechanism (due to the crushing of the vertical structural elements), suggested that a feasible explanation for this particular damage pattern does not involve only the intrinsic vulnerability of this type of buildings, but deals also with the high energy content in the high frequency range observed in the vertical component of the seismic events. In order to understand the structural damage patterns surveyed, synthetic accelerograms, representative of the main shock (Ml = 5.4 on 31 October 2002), were computed. The Empirical Green Function (EGF) method was applied to compute the seismic input adopted in the nonlinear dynamic analyses that we performed for the church of S. Maria Assunta. The results confirm that the observed damage pattern cannot totally be put down to the vulnerability of the building, but the particular characteristics of the seismic action played a fundamental role in determining it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]