Earthquake synchrony and clustering on Fucino faults (Central Italy) as revealed from in situ36Cl exposure dating

We recover the Holocene earthquake history of seven seismogenic normal faults in the Fucino system, central Italy. We collected 800 samples from the well-preserved limestone scarps of the faults and modeled their 36Cl concentrations to derive their seismic exhumation history. We found that > 30 large earthquakes broke the faults in synchrony over the last 12 ka. The seven faults released strain at the same periods of time, 12-9 ka, 5-3 ka, and 1.5-1 ka. On all faults, the strain accumulation and release occurred in 3-6 ka supercycles, each included a 3-5 ka phase of slow (≤ 0.5-2 mm/yr) strain accumulation in relative quiescence, followed by a cluster of three to four large earthquakes or earthquake sequences that released most of the strain in