There Greece was hit by Two violent earthquake shocksrespectively of magnitude 4.5 (local hours 9:56, in Italy 8:56) e 4.6 (3:23 in Greece, 2:23 in Italy) Sunday 18 May, a few days after a strong 6.0 magnitude earthquake off Crete. Both seismes recorded an epicenter about 130 km from Athens, at a variable depth between 9 and 18 km. Although the two events have been clearly warned throughout the area, There are no particular damage to things or people.
From a geological point of view, the news should not be surprised: the Greece And extremely seismic due to the particular geological context in which it is inserted. To understand it we can observe the following map.
As we can see, on the whole Hellenic area there are numerous circles, each of which has a different size. The bigger they are, the more the magnitude associated with each historical earthquake is high. The color instead relates to the depth, With the clearer rims to indicate the most superficial and darker seismes to represent those with a deeper hypocenter.
The reasons behind this large number of shocks is to be found in the black line present on the lower edge of the image that represents the subduction from the African plate below that Eurasian. To the macroscala precisely this movement – whose estimated speed is approximately 10 mm per year – It would be the main manager of all these shocks.
If, on the other hand, we go down to a more local level, each earthquake is triggered by a different fault system. Precisely for this reason the two shocks in question are not directly connected to that of magnitude 6.0 recorded on May 14 off the coast of Crete.
