Fabrizio Agosta

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• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Basilicata

Aiming at understanding the source of the fluids that mineralizing within seismically active fault zones, we investigate the noble gas isotopes (i.e., helium (He), neon (Ne), and argon (Ar)) in the fluid inclusions (FIs) trapped in the calcite veins sampled along high‐angle fault zones of the Contursi hydrothermal basin, southern Italy. The latter...

Aiming at assessing the porosity and permeability properties, we present the results of microstructural and laboratory measurements, including density, porosity, VP, VS, and electrical resistivity. These measurements were performed in dry and in saturated conditions on 54 blocks of Mesozoic carbonate host rocks and fault breccias collected in Greec...

In the brittle regime, fault zones in low porosity carbonates are characterized by a variety of deformation mechanisms and diagenetic processes, which might determine a profound effect on the time-space evolution of mineralization and fluid pathways within fractured reservoirs. Deformation associated to faulting of pre-existing structural heterogen...

Faults are known to have a profound influence on both migration and storage of geofluids in the shallow crust. Due to their conducive, sealing, and/or combined barrier-conduct hydraulic behaviour, faults impact the modalities of fluid flow and accumulation according to the processes associated to their nucleation and growth, the geometry of the int...

Aiming at understanding the source of the fluids that mineralizing within seismically active fault zones, we investigate the noble gas isotopes (i.e., helium (He), neon (Ne), and argon (Ar)) in the fluid inclusions (FIs) trapped in the calcite veins sampled along high-angle fault zones of the Contursi hydrothermal basin, southern Italy. The latter...

Understanding the factors that govern past fluid circulation in tectonically active and/or hydrocarbon-rich basins is crucial for elucidating present-day fluid-flow scenarios. We investigate the circulation of paleo-fluids in the extensional-transtensional Val d'Agri Basin (southern Italy), home to a giant oil field and significantly affected by bo...

The role of fluids in faults during single seismic cycles is a greatly debated topic. An increasingly literature suggests that fluids might trigger instability favoring slip during nucleation and/or propagation of coseismic fault ruptures, and due to fracturing might affect the long-term structural diagenesis of fault zones. Indeed, both cementatio...

Faults can have a profound influence on the accumulation and migration of fluids in the shallow crust. Due to their conductive, sealing, and/or combined fluid barrier-conduct behaviour, faults impact the subsurface hydrogeology according to the processes associated with their nucleation and growth, the geometry of the interacting fault segments, th...

Studies on natural and laboratory slip surfaces demonstrate that roughness evolves with increasing slip and displays a scale-dependency inversely proportional to the fault length regardless of lithology. However, only a few studies have quantified the possible variation of roughness along single slip surfaces and at linkage zone between adjacent fa...

Aiming at understanding the source of the fluids that mineralizing within seismically active fault zones, we study the noble gas isotopes (i.e. helium (He), neon (Ne) and argon (Ar)) in the fluid inclusions (FIs) within the calcite veins sampled along high-angle fault zones of the Contursi hydrothermal basin, southern Italy. The latter basin lies i...

Lower Jurassic to Cretaceous shallow-water carbonate rocks. The carbonates are exposed along the flanks of the Viggiano Mt., on the eastern side of the High Agri Valley Basin of southern Italy. Furthermore, we employ the results of field and digital structural analyses to derive the input parameters for subsequent Discrete Fracture Network modellin...

Pressure solution processes taking place during diagenesis deeply modify the hydraulic properties of carbonates, affecting their mechanical layering and hence the dimension, distribution, and connectivity of high-angle fractures. The formation of stylolites is controlled by the texture of the host rock and therefore by the depositional environment...

The Val d’Agri Basin is a Quaternary sedimentary basin topping multiple tectonic units of the southern Apen nines fold-and-thrust belt and a giant oilfield within deeper Apulian Platform carbonates. This basin is bounded by the seismically active East Agri (EAFS) and Monti della Maddalena (MMFS) extensional fault systems. The reservoir rocks are...

Aiming at assessing the porosity and permeability properties, we present the results of microstructural and laboratory measurements of density, porosity, VP, VS, and electrical resistivity performed in dry and in saturated conditions on 54 blocks of Mesozoic carbonate host rocks and fault breccias. Host rocks consist of carbonate mudstones, wackest...

The high-angle faults bounding the High Agri Valley Basin eastwards are well-exposed at the Viggiano Mt., southern Italy. There, these faults crosscut Mesozoic shallow-water carbonates and permit the multiscale analyses of fault and fracture geometry and distribution. Aiming at assessing the control exerted by carbonate lithofacies and scales of ob...

Low-Angle Normal Faults (LANFs) consist of shallowly dipping extensional structures that require the activation of strain weakening mechanisms to allow slip. However, unravelling if LANFs can host seismic deformation in the brittle crust still remain a debated question. In order to better understand the mechanical behavior of these structures, the...

The study of fault-related vein mineralization is key to unravel the modalities of paleofluid circulation in the Earth’s crust in association with crustal deformation and earthquake faulting. This information is crucial to better assess the present day hazard associated to the seismically active fault. Detailed field and microstructural observat...

Depositional environments affect the formation of a variety of rock lithofacies in shallow-water carbonates, whose mechanical properties might be controlled by diagenetic processes such as cementation and physical-chemical compaction (Lucia, 2003). The stratigraphic architecture of carbonate platforms often includes laminations, bed surfaces, and b...

Diagenetic and tectonic processes taking place in platform carbonates produce significant textural and mineralogical modifications through time, influencing the pore space properties (Lucia, 2007). Focusing on pressure solution processes, this study is conducted on Lower Jurassic, mud- and grain-supported carbonates, and on Cretaceous, grain-suppor...

We combined field mapping, structural and microstructural analyses, stable‐clumped isotope geochemistry, and U‐Pb dating of calcite veins and syn‐tectonic slickenfibres, to assess the regional scale fault‐related fluid flow during the evolution of the External Hellenides fold‐and‐thrust belt. We show that fluid circulation during forebulge uplift w...

Depositional and diagenetic processes profoundly control the structural evolution of shallow-water carbonates through time. We focus on the Lower Jurassic platform carbonates pertaining to the southern Apennines fold-and-thrusts belt, Italy, by performing 3D digital outcrop modeling, field structural analysis, and microstructural investigation. Res...

This work focuses on a ca. 55 km-long extensional fault zone buried underneath the fore-deep deposits of the southern Apennines, Italy, with the goal of deciphering the Cenozoic fault growth mechanisms in the Outer Apulian Platform. By considering public 2D seismic reflection profiles , well logs, and isochron maps data, the study normal fault zone...

Karst processes may be critical for developing secondary porosity and permeability within carbonate reservoirs and aquifers. Karstification can significantly influence reservoir storage capacity and subsurface fluid flow. This study investigates the interplay between fluid-flow pathways and diagenesis in an epigenic karst setting in Cretaceous shal...

The study carbonates are exposed in the axial zone of the southern Apennines ftb, Italy. These rocks form a natural laboratory to investigate the time-dependent variation of primary heterogeneities and both dimensional properties and distribution of high-angle joints, veins, and shear fractures. We integrate field-based stratigraphic and structural...

The use of field analogues in fractured reservoir studies is increasingly becoming popular because while large faults are mappable using geological and seismic data and small faults/fractures via well data, they are bound by certain limitations. For faults, it only provides limited information about dimensions, kinematics, and crosscutting relation...

In order to assess the possible control exerted by the primary architecture of platform carbonates on both geometry and distribution fracture networks, we focus on a portion of the Apenninic Platform exposed in southern Italy. We first document the depositional architecture of a ca. 100 m-thick succession including lower Jurassic and upper Cretac...

The Viggiano Mt. platform carbonates form a layered succession cross-cut by a dense array of pressure solution seams, and five sets of fractures and veins, which together form a sub-seismic structural network associated with polyphasic tectonic evolution. To assess the influence exerted by depositional and diagenetic heterogeneities on fracture geo...

Faults are characterized by a complex internal architecture. In carbonates, the geometry, attitude, and distribution of fault-related fractures and subsidiary faults can largely affect the petrophysical properties and hydraulic behavior of the fault zone. This work investigates the footwall damage zone of a seismic-scale normal fault (throw ∼ 300 m...

This study aims at evaluating the control exerted by fracture stratigraphy and diagenetic processes on oil first migration through an outcropping, mixed carbonate-siliciclastic succession. The present work included results of sedimentological, paleontological, mineralogical, petrographic, structural, and microstructural analyses carried out on orga...

This work focuses on the structural setting of a small area of the Murge Plateau, southern Italy, exposing Turonian bauxites and encompassing Upper Cretaceous carbonates of the Apulian Platform. By combining field geological and structural mapping with mineralogical and petrographic investigations of representative rock samples, we document the con...

Active faults within the southern Apennines fold-and-thrust belt modulate the present-day upwelling of hydrothermal fluids at surface. In the Monte Alpi area, we investigated the structural and geo-morphological settings of ∼10 km²-wide area, and texture and stable isotope composition of Quaternary travertine deposits to identify the present day fa...

This work focuses on a multi-method study of badlands exposed in two different areas of southern Italy. Results of both geomorphological and structural geological studies are obtained by combining field and laboratory analyses of the badlands affecting Plio-Quaternary silty-clays of southern Italy. Results are discussed in terms of deformation mech...

This work focuses on a multi-method study of badlands exposed in two different areas of southern Italy. Results of both geomorphological and structural geological studies are obtained by combining field and laboratory analyses of the badlands affecting Plio-Quaternary silty-clays of southern Italy. Results are discussed in terms of deformation mech...

The carbonate rocks exposed in the Irecê (Brazil) are pervasively affected by hydrothermal silicification and dolomitization. These mineralizing events drastically changed the original petrophysical properties of the host rock. In order to understand the role played by deformation mechanisms and tectonic evolution of these carbonates on the ingress...

Bed-perpendicular diffuse fractures are common features in carbonates that could be affected by early embrittlement process, which may enhance vertically persistent, opening-mode fractures during the first stages of diagenesis. Early-developed fractures could be independent of tectonics and form a background structural network at different scale. T...

4 ADNOC Offshore, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Bed-perpendicular diffuse fractures are common features in carbonates. Several studies documented how their distribution, dimension and overall geometry are affected by primary heterogeneities such as bed interfaces, erosional surfaces and pedogenic unconformities. Others studies showed that the ear...

Aiming at investigating the hydrothermal circulation along the eastern flank of the Vulture volcano, along the outermost edge of the southern Apennine fold-and-thrust belt (ftb), we studied the fossil hydrothermal alteration that mineralized a transtensional fault that crosscuts volcanoclastic rocks in the Rapolla area. On the basis of structural,...

The complex fluid saturation distribution and influence of microscale and mesoscale fractures on the fluid accumulation and flow properties of carbonates are still interesting challenges for petroleum geologists. For this reason, in order to know the relative role played by the aforementioned features on the storage and migration properties of tigh...

This work focuses on the nature, relative timing, and multi-scale dimensional properties of both background and fault-related fracture networks that crosscut the Lower Cretaceous shallow-water carbonates exposed at the Monte Alpi, southern Italy. Away from the major fault zones, fractures mainly consist of stratabound and non-stratabound joints and...

This contribution focuses on field and laboratory analyses of carbonate fault cores pertaining to high-angle extensional fault zones currently exposed in the central and southern Apennines, Italy. The fault zones studied crosscut Mesozoic platform-related carbonate rocks, strike ca. NW-SE, and dip steeply SW. They formed during the Plio-Quaternary...

Hypothermal springs are located along the SW edge of the Monte Alpi massif, southern Italy, which is comprised of Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous carbonates and Upper Miocene mixed carbonate-terrigenous deposits pertaining to the Inner Apulian Platform. All together, the hypothermal spring average discharge is about 0.5 m3/s, at a constant temperature of...

This work focuses on the control exerted by primary heterogeneities pertaining to the Lower Cretaceous limestones of the Inner Apulian Platform, exposed at the Monte Alpi, southern Italy, on the dimensional and scalar properties of the fracture network that crosscut them. By combining traditional scanline and scanarea methods applied to outcrop-sca...

It is well known that fracture distribution and fault zone architecture play a significant role in the containment and migration of fluids in natural fractured reservoirs. Although only faults with a throw larger than 15 m are detectible in seismic images, understanding fluid flow characteristics in below seismic scale resolution faults is imperati...

This work is aimed at assessing the time-space diagenetic evolution of carbonate fault rocks cropping out along extensional fault zones of central and southern Apennines, Italy. The goals is to decipher the interplay between brittle deformation and diagenesis of both calcite-and dolomite-rich carbonate fault rocks, which underwent to a quick exhuma...

Fracture type, geometry, distribution and dimensional properties play a significant role in the containment and migration of fluids in underground natural reservoirs. These properties are functions of the host rock rheology, which hence affect the modalities of fracture propagation within rock multilayers. In order to gain new insights on this topi...

Results of a combined field and laboratory study of Lower Cretaceous limestones exposed along vertical cliffs of the Monte Alpi massif, southern Italy, are presented. Field analyses aimed at deciphering both stratigraphy and structural setting of the limestones, which include a wide spectrum of calcareous facies characteristic of inner-to-platform...

We provide a database of the coseismic geological surface effects following the Mw 6.5 Norcia earthquake that hit central Italy on 30 October 2016. This was one of the strongest seismic events to occur in Europe in the past thirty years, causing complex surface ruptures over an area of >400 km2. The database originated from the collaboration of sev...

We present a 1:25,000 scale map of the coseismic surface ruptures following the 30 October 2016 M w 6.5 Norcia normal-faulting earthquake, central Italy. Detailed rupture mapping is based on almost 11,000 oblique photographs taken from helicopter flights, that has been verified and integrated with field data (>7000 measurements). Thanks to the comm...

The present contribution focuses on the micro-mechanisms associated to cataclasis of both calcite- and dolomite-rich fault rocks. This work combines field and laboratory data of carbonate fault cores currently exposed in central and southern Italy. By first deciphering the main fault rock textures, their spatial distribution, crosscutting relations...

A composite seismic source, the Irpinia - Agri Valley Fault zone, located in the axial sector of the fold-and-thrust belt of southern Apennines, Italy, is investigated. This composite source is made up of a series of nearly parallel, NW-striking normal fault segments which caused many historical earthquakes. Two of these fault segments, known as th...

Discrete Fracture Network (DFN) modelling is a useful tool to assess both fluid storage and migration properties of naturally fractured carbonate rocks. This work presents the results of multiple DFN models, which represent the structural network associated with a ca. 100 m–offset, oblique-slip, normal fault zone crosscutting Miocene ramp carbonate...

We welcome the discussion of our paper on the geological map of the central sector of the Montagna dei Fiori by Santantonio and co-workers, because this will contribute to improving the understanding of the complex geological setting of the area and, eventually, helping to disentangle the pre-

A 3D geological modeling of a large portion of the Apulian Platform buried underneath the bradano trough, southern Italy, is carried out by integrating 2D seismic reflection profiles, well log data, and published top Apula isobaths. the results of this work highlight the presence of five sets of high-angle, km-long faults, which displace the topmos...

Underground CO 2 storage in depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs may become a common practice in the future to lower the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Results from the first experiments conducted in carbonate rocks, for instance the Lacq integrated CCS Pilot site, SW France, are quite exciting. All monitored parameters, such as th...

This work focuses on the structural architecture and mineralization of a high-angle, extensional fault zone that crosscuts the Middle Pleistocene tuffs and pyroclastites of the Vulture Volcano, southern Italy. This fault zone is topped by a few m-thick travertine deposit formed by precipitation, in a typical lacustrine depositional environment, fro...

The Monte Alpi is a key area to decipher the structural setting of the southern Apennines fold-and-thrust belt. there, high-angle faults juxtapose Mesozoic carbonates of the inner Apulian Platform, and their terrigenous Messinian sedimentary cover, against the allochthon terranes. In the recent past, two main tectonic models related to the evolutio...

This work is aimed at deciphering the role played by cataclasis on both amount and distribution of connected porosity in carbonate fault rocks. Despite the great importance of this knowledge for structural geologists dealing with seismic or working in the hydrocarbon, water, and geothermal industries, the micro-mechanics and petrophysics of carbona...

This work focuses on two fault-controlled deposits, the Atella and Rapolla travertines, which are associated to high-angle extensional faults of the Bradano Trough, southern Apennines (Italy). The Atella travertine is along a NW-SE striking, deep-seated extensional fault, already described in literature, which crosscuts both Apulian carbonates and...

In this work, we examine faults that crosscut limestone and chert rocks pertaining to a slope-to-basin succession of the eastern Gargano Promontory (southern Italy). Based on field data, microstructural observations, and quantitative analysis of cataclastic fabric, two stages of faulting are recognized. The first one, the pre-lithification faulting...

This article focuses on field- and laboratory-based characterization of vertically persistent fractures that are part of oblique-slip normal fault zones and crosscut the Cretaceous platform and overlaying ramp carbonates outcropping at Maiella Mountain (central Italy). The achieved results show that: (i) fault damage zones are wider and more densel...

The Monte Alpi area, located in the inner portion of the southern Apennines fold-and-thrust belt, exposes the inner portion Apulian Platform, and it can be considered as a structural analogue of the Val d’Agri carbonate reservoir. In the recent past, several models were proposed to explain the structural evolution of the Monte Alpi. Among those, on...

The work tackles the control exerted by a sub-seismic fracture network on both secondary porosity and correspondent permeability of outcropping tight carbonates. Taking advantage of excellent 3D exposures, located in the Murge Plateau of southern Italy, the fracture network is investigated at different scales of observation. The rock multi-layer is...

The modelling of natural fracture in reservoirs requires, as input data, the results of previous detailed and accurate analysis of the 3D fracture network. These data could be derived from well logs and production tests (which however limit our understanding of the fracture geometry, intensity and distribution) and outcrop analogues. Data obtained...

Faults in siliciclastic rocks are characterized by great variability of fault zone architecture and relative permeability properties. This is because siliciclastic rocks (i.e. turbidite successions) are commonly represented by alternating layers of various thickness and grain size, forming successions with contrasting mechanical properties. For exa...

Slip along low-angle normal faults is a mechanical paradox requiring activation of strain weakening mechanisms. Microstructures present in the slip zones of incipient low-angle normal faults cutting carbonates in the Southern Apennines of Italy show that slip was promoted by two weakening mechanisms producing a reduction of the friction coefficient...

In order to better understand the relative contribution of background and localized deformation on the petrophysical properties of fractured tight carbonates, Discrete Fracture Network (DFN) models of representative outcrops were build up by using a stochastic approach. The study carbonates, which crop out along the vertical walls and pavements of...