On the occasion of 25th anniversary of INGV (National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology), the new interactive map of Italian seismicity has been published and can be consulted for free online. Inside they are reported 72 thousand earthquakes of magnitude 2.0 or greater that occurred between January 1, 1999 and the August 31, 2024. The various shocks are classified mainly on the basis of:
- at the magnitudewith events greater than magnitude 5.0 indicated with a star;
- at the depth of the hypocenterwith a chromatic scale that passes from yellow (superficial) al viola (deep).
Various earthquakes have been recorded in this quarter of a century since Integrated National Seismic Network and most events are yellow. These are therefore superficial earthquakes, with a depth within 15 kmand are distributed quite homogeneously in the main seismic areas of the peninsula, i.e. along the Apennine chain and near the main Italian volcanoes, such as Etna, Vesuvius, the Aeolian Islands and the Flegrean area. The deeper earthquakes instead, indicated by color viola, they are concentrated above all in the Central-southern Tyrrhenian Seain correspondence with the subduction of the Calabrian Arc.
In addition to the map, the official website also contains data regarding the temporal distribution of earthquakes: in 2016 this value has reached a maximum of 11,854 shocks. This number is largely linked to the seismic sequence of the Amatrice earthquake. The same goes for the second peak, the one from 4943 shocks of 2009, linked to the L’Aquila earthquake.
But why are there so many earthquakes in Italy from a geological point of view? To clarify, we have created an ad hoc video on the topic:
