
Francesca GhisettiUniversity of Canterbury | UC · School of Earth and Environment
Francesca Ghisetti
Professor
About
120
Publications
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Introduction
I am a field-oriented structural geologist with many years of work in orogenic belts, sedimentary basins and actively deforming regions (Italy, New Zealand, Calfornia, Greece).
I have developed my career in the academic environment, but I am now committed to research and consulting only.
My present work is focused on tectonics and active faulting in New Zealand.
Additional affiliations
January 2009 - December 2021
January 1993 - December 2003
University of Catania Italy
Position
- Professor (Full)
January 2002 - December 2007
Education
January 1972 - December 1976
Publications
Publications (120)
Three depth-converted and geologically interpreted seismic profiles provide a clear image of the offshore outer accretionary wedge associated with oblique subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the central Hikurangi margin. Plio-Quaternary turbidites deposited over the pelagic cover sequence of the Hikurangi Plateau have been accreted to the margi...
Compressional inversion involves reverse-slip reactivation (strike slip) of normal faults inherited from earlier crustal extension during crustal shortening. Examples of seismically active inversion provinces with damaging earthquakes M < 7:8 range from active island arc systems to formerly rifted cratonic crust. Inversion structures are characteri...
The Waimea-Flaxmore Fault System (W-FFS) comprises NE-striking, SE-dipping reverse faults superposing Eastern Province terranes on Cenozoic sedimentary units of the Moutere Depression. We present a revised geological map and cross sections of the W-FFS in the Nelson-Richmond urban area, aimed at reconstructing the structural evolution during multip...
Retro-deformation of horizontal and vertical displacements is used to reconstruct the evolution of the South Island plate boundary faults since the Late Miocene. Finite dextral offset across the Alpine Fault is estimated from a system of N-S reverse faults displaced from Otago to the Glenroy-Matakitaki area, where the N-S tectonic trends are genera...
The New Zealand Community Fault Model (NZ CFM) is a publicly available representation of New Zealand fault zones that have the potential to produce damaging earthquakes. Compiled through collaborative engagement between New Zealand earthquake-science experts, this first edition (version 1.0) of the NZ CFM builds upon previous compilations of earthq...
The geology of the Nelson-Richmond urban area was mapped by Johnston (1979; 1981; 1982) and included in the subsequent regional compilation of the Nelson QMap at scale 1:250,000 (Rattenbury et al. 1998). The revised map presented here is the updated v3 (2022), that replaces the previous version 2021. This map incorporates new stratigraphic and stru...
There has been a long-identified need in New Zealand for a community-developed, three- dimensional (3D) model of active faults that is publicly accessible and available to all practitioners. Over the past year, work has progressed on building and parameterising such a model – the New Zealand Community Fault Model (NZ CFM). The NZ CFM will serve as...
The southcentral Hikurangi subduction margin (North Island, New Zealand) has a wide, low-taper accretionary wedge that is frontally accreting a >3-km-thick layer of sediments, with deformation currently focused near the toe of the wedge. We use a geological model based on a depth-converted seismic section, together with physically realistic paramet...
Actively deforming crust and upper mantle around the obliquely convergent Pacific-Australia plate boundary in the northern South Island of New Zealand have been investigated by seismic tomography using data from a temporary c. 50 station network plus GEONET. The Alpine-Wairau Fault (principal component of the plate boundary at the surface) transect...
The subsurface structure of the Moutere Depression is obscured by a thick Plio-Quaternary gravel sequence. Surface and subsurface data have been used to define a blind basement pop-up bounded to the west by a NNE-striking reverse fault dipping c. 50°E (Ruby Bay-Moutere Fault, RB-MF). The RB-MF is geometrically and kinematically similar to the adjac...
Protothrusts mark the onset of deformation at the toe of large subduction accretionary wedges. They are recognized in seismic reflection sections as small-displacement (tens of meters) faults seaward of the primary frontal thrust fault. Although assumed to reflect incipient accretionary deformation and to mark the location of future thrusts, few st...
A 3D model of the geologic structure and associated seismic velocities in the Canterbury, New Zealand, region is developed utilizing data from depth-converted seismic reflection lines, petroleum and water-well logs, and cone penetration tests and is implicitly guided by existing contour maps and geologic cross sections in data-sparse subregions. Th...
Geospatial pdf of the Geological Map (Sheet 2) included in the CD-ROM of the Geological Society of America Special Publication 469 (2010, ISBN 978-0-8137-2469-0). Geo-referencing added to the original document, using projection IGM95-UTM33. The legend of this map is in Sheet 1.
Geospatial pdf of the Geological Map (Sheet 2) included in the CD-ROM of the Geological Society of America Special Publication 469 (2010, ISBN 978-0-8137-2469-0). Geo-referencing added to the original document, using projection IGM95-UTM33. The legend of this map is in Sheet 1.
Geospatial pdf (projection IGM95_UTM33) of the geological map originally published by S.EL.CA, Florence in 1990
Geospatial pdf (projection IGM95-UTM33) of the geological map of the eastern Gran Sasso Range (central Italy),
originally printed in 1986, by S.EL.CA, Florence.
The North Westland deformation front runs offshore for 320 km between Cape Farewell and Hokitika at a distance of 3–30 km from the coast. From marine seismic reflection profiles integrated with published sediment core and coastal uplift data, we infer late Quaternary activity on six major reverse faults. The principal structures are the Cape Foulwi...
Tectonic activity in the South Island of New Zealand is dominated by the Alpine Fault component of the Australia–Pacific plate boundary. West of the Alpine Fault deformation is recorded by Paleogene–Neogene basins coeval with the evolution of the right-lateral/transpressive plate margin. Initial tectonic setting was controlled by N–S normal faults...
The 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence highlighted the existence of previously unknown active faults beneath the North Canterbury plains and Pegasus Bay, South Island, New Zealand. We provide new insights into the geometry and kinematics of ongoing deformation by analysing marine seismic data to produce new maps of regional faults and cross-s...
GPS data show that the shallow part of the northern Hikurangi subduction thrust fault is creeping, while the southern segment is locked to greater depths and appears capable of producing great earthquakes. Wedge morphology and deformation also change along-strike, with a wide accretionary imbricate wedge in southern and central Hikurangi transition...
Geometry of the Top Basement Unconformity (TBU) west of the Alpine Fault has been reconstructed through a set of cross-sections linking surface and subsurface geology. Onshore, the TBU shows tectonic relief of several kilometres between antiformal pop-ups and synformal depressions in contrast with a smoother topography offshore. This geometry arise...
Earthquake ruptures of the 2010–2011 Canterbury sequence exploit a varying mixture of optimally oriented newly formed faults and inherited discontinuities that are favourably oriented for reactivation within the prevailing tectonic stress field. Reinterpretation of subsurface data shows that the Torlesse basement is imprinted with an E–W fault fabr...
The initial Mw7.1 Darfield earthquake sequence was centred west of Christchurch City in the South Island of New Zealand but aftershocks, including a highly destructive Mw6.3 event, eventually extended eastwards across the city to the coast. The mainshock gave rise to rightlateral strike-slip of up to 5 m along the segmented rupture trace of a subve...
Large earthquakes within seismogenic crust are generally thought to require the pre-existence of large fault structures. Such fault structures appear to evolve by the progressive growth and amalgamation of smaller faults and fractures (Cowie and Scholz 1992). In the course of their evolution some components of an evolving fault system may be inheri...
To improve our understanding of active faulting away from the main plate boundary on New Zealand's South Island, we have acquired high resolution seismic data across the Ostler Fault Zone Twelve 1.2 km long lines perpendicular to fault strike and a 1.6 km long crossline were collected in a region of the MacKenzie Basin where surface mapping delinea...
In an attempt to understand the structure of active faults as they emerge from bedrock into shallow semi-consolidated and unconsolidated sediments, we have recorded a comprehensive high-resolution seismic reflection/refraction data set across the Ostler Fault zone on the central South Island of New Zealand. This fault zone, which absorbs 1–2 mm/yr...
In the peri-Adriatic region, mélanges represent a significant component of the Apennine and Dinaride – Albanide –Hellenide orogenic belts as well as ancient and present-day accretionary wedges. Different mélange types in this broad region provide an excellent case study to investigate the mode and nature of main processes (tectonic, sedimentary, an...
The Geological-Structural Map of the Central-Southern Apennines (Italy)1 provides entirely revised and original cartography for a large sector of the orogenic belt that stretches along peninsular Italy. New data collected by the authors over the past 20 years, together with field revisions of published data, and available subsurface data are synthe...
In Sicily, the progressive imbrication of the Apenninic thrust belt above the Pelagian-African Foreland is traced by the southward migration of marine basins that were progressively shortened during the late Miocene-Pleistocene. The outermost and youngest thrust sheet (Gela Nappe) displays a peculiar shortening, with Messinian to early Pliocene E-W...
The Ostler Fault is one of the major active reverse faults in the piedmont of the Southern Alps, SE of the Alpine Fault. We present a new geological and morphotectonic map of the southern Ostler Fault, integrated with two seismic reflection profiles across the active central segments of the fault. Segmented, subparallel scarps define a N-S belt (∼4...
Sets of late- or post-orogenic brittle strike-slip faults disrupt the complex of subgreenschist to amphibolite facies metasediments and metavolcanics intruded by granites that make up the Proterozoic Mt Isa inlier of NW Queensland, Australia. Subvertical dextral faults with offsets
Shortening across the plate boundary in the South Island of New Zealand
is accommodated not just along the right-lateral transpressive Alpine
Fault, but also on an array of N-S reverse faults in both the Australian
and Pacific crust. The Ostler Fault is such a structure, developed in
the piedmont of the Southern Alps, east of the Alpine Fault. The...
In the NW South Island, New Zealand, high-angle faults inherited from episodes of Late Cretaceous–Paleocene and Eocene extension have, since the early Miocene, undergone compressional inversion in association with right-lateral shearing and transpression on the Alpine Fault. Active reverse faulting and large historical earthquakes occur along N–S t...
The Waiau and Te Anau basins of Western Southland have formed within a zone of deformation associated with the mid Cenozoic to current plate boundary. Basement terranes provide useful markers for the nature and amount of extension, shortening and lateral movements within this zone. Basement structures have also been an important factor in determini...
The Proterozoic Mt Isa inlier, comprising greenschist to amphibolite facies metamorphic assemblages intruded by granites during the Isan Orogeny (1590-1500 Ma), is disrupted by brittle, late- or post-orogenic strike-slip faults. The faults occur in two mutually cross-cutting sets; a set of NE-SW subvertical dextral strike-slip faults, and a conjuga...
1] In the Gulf of Corinth, E-W active normal faults and Pleistocene sedimentary basins are segmented along strike by a NNW-SSE culmination of the Hellenic thrust belt (Zarouchla culmination, ZC), which separates the Derveni-Corinth basin to the east from the Aigion basin to the west. The eastern zone is characterized by active faults with larger di...
1] Changes in Coulomb failure stress (DCFS) induced by dike propagation during two flank eruptions on Mt. Etna (1981 and 2001) are calculated for the most seismically active faults on the east slope of the volcano (the right-lateral Timpe fault system, oriented NNW-SSE, and the left-lateral Pernicana fault, oriented E-W). Calculations performed usi...
The Overlander Fault is one of a set of NE-SW subvertical dextral strike-slip faults which, together with a NW-SE conjugate sinistral set, disrupt the Mt Isa Proterozoic orogen (1590-1500 Ma) in NW Queensland, Australia. These late- to post-orogenic faults thus define a regional stress field with sigma 1 oriented approximately E-W and sigma 3 orien...
Facies, thickness and distribution of Plio-Pleistocene syntectonic
deposits in the Gulf of Corinth allow us to distinguish two different
sub-basins in the southwestern and southeastern margin of the graben:
the Aigion Basin to the west and the Derveni Basin to the east. The
boundary between the two sub-basins is a transverse,
north-south-oriented s...
The Proterozoic Mt Isa inlier ( ˜50,000 km2) in NW
Queensland, Australia, underwent a complex tectonothermal history
involving multiple episodes of intracontinental rifting, sedimentation,
and magmatism that culminated in the Isan Orogeny (1590-1500 Ma) where
strong E-W shortening led to compressional inversion of former rift
basins. The resulting...
Fault growth occurs in crust that is often strongly heterogeneous. Lateral variations of geometrical and mechanical properties are more difficult to recognize and model than simple horizontal layering, but they play an important role, especially in domains of superposed deformation. The Corinth Rift (Greece) is an ideal setting for analysing dimens...
The outer Adriatic zones of the central Apennines (Italy) provide good conditions for analysing geometry and kinematics of the earliest normal faults, superposed onto the thrust belt. During the latest stages of thrusting onto the Adriatic foreland (late Pliocene–early Pleistocene), the outermost imbricates of the thrust belt were subjected to norm...
Late Pliocene–Pleistocene tectonic evolution of the Apennines is driven by progressive eastward migration of extensional downfaulting superposed onto the Late Miocene–Early Pliocene compressional thrust belt. This process has led to distinct structural domains that show decreasing transcrustal permeability from conditions of pervasive mixing betwee...
Since early Pliocene times the Apenninic chain has been dissected by normal faults propagating towards the Adriatic foreland. In the Tyrrhenian Sea extension involved deep crustal sections, whereas in the ‘Central Apennines Downfaulted Area’ it affected the shallow crust. The Tyrrhenian back-arc domain is connected to the overall flexural retreat o...
The existence of a proto-rift in the Gulf of Corinth area has been debated for long time by various authors. Recent subsurface acquisitions through DG-Lab in the Aigion area as well as new field data collection on the southern margin of the rift provide some new insights on the history of progressive opening of the rift. 1- In the studied area, the...
We have investigated the structures and stable isotope geochemistry of fault rocks within thrust faults and normal faults of the central Apennines in order to understand the fluid circulation during late Miocene-early Pliocene contraction and late Pliocene-Pleistocene extension of the thrust belt. Stable isotope data were obtained for 70 carbonate...
A SW–NE crustal cross-section across the central Apennines shows that the eastward advancement of extensional downfaulting superposed onto the contractional edifice since the late Miocene has spatially juxtaposed tectonic domains distinguished by crustal structure, contemporary deformation styles, and fluid circulation. Structural data coupled with...
In the outermost domains of the central Apennines fold-and-thrust belt, the structural architecture of the late Miocene–early Pliocene contractional edifice was controlled by competence contrasts in the Calcareous–Marly sequences of Mesozoic–Tertiary age, and by a different state of lithification of the rock units at the onset of deformation. Field...
Geometry and kinematics of small-scale faults adjacent to large seismically active faults have been analyzed for a large region of southern California. The sampled population of small-scale faults is scattered in orientation and slip but possesses distinct trends. Two important characteristics are, first, the paucity of small-scale faults that mimi...
In the foreland fold-and-thrust belt of the central Apennines, the major thrust sheets design systems of arcs, interfering with noncoaxial trends. Localization of shortening by thrusting and shearing appears to be controlled by the squeezing of low-competence, basinal units (Marche, Gran Sasso-Monte Picca and Monte Genzana) in between the rigid blo...
This map was originally released with the Volume "Geologia dell'Abruzzo Nord-Orientale",
Atti Ticinesi di Scienze della Terra, Serie Speciale, Volume 2, Pavia, 1994.
The attached map is geo-referenced.
Recent interpretations based on seismic reflection profiles and on structural mapping have led to conflicting models of the geometry and kinematics of the fold and thrust belt of the Apennines. These problems are illustrated by regional cross sections across the Umbria-Marche and Lazio-Abruzzi units, and the Adriatic foredeep. For these sections, a...
The Lazio-Abruzzi carbonate units override the Marche domain and the outer Maiella domain along a frontal overthrust, segmented into a northern belt with E-W orientation and an eastern belt with N-S orientation. At the eastern tip of the Gran Sasso belt the E-W structures come to a halt against the N-S-oriented shear zone Rigopiano-Bussi-Rivisondol...
Interference between discordant tectonic trends in the central Apennines (Italy) was investigated in a palaeomagnetic study of the arc-shaped E-W- to N-S-oriented overthrust units of the Lazio-Abruzzi carbonate platform (Gran Sasso), and the underlying N-S-oriented imbricates of the Marche pelagic domain (Mt. dei Fiori). Samples were taken from 26...
The Messina Strait is characterized by strong deformations in Pliocene and Pleistocene times, but considering the historical seismicity, significant uncertainity exists as to whether any of the surface fault systems reflects the location, geometry and mechanisms of the seismogenic source. Based on field data and structural analyses, the parameters...
The Lazio-Abruzzi carbonate platform overrides the outermost sectors of the foreland fold and thrust belt of the central Apennines of Italy along an arcuate thrust front, which swings from E-W to NNW-SSE orientation. The E-W striking, north verging thrust faults of the Gran Sasso cut in their footwall the N-S oriented, east verging imbricates of th...
The north-eastern border of the Lazio-Abruzzi platform is dissected by the shear zone Rigopiano-Bussi-Rivisondoli (RBR). This is a N-S oriented belt, marked by flower structures with right-lateral en echelon arrangement. Early Pliocene shearing on the RBR appears to be synchronous with the anticlockwise rotations of the Gran Sasso thrust belt up to...
In the Central Apennines (Italy) three major domains can be recognized: the Umbria and Marche pelagic domains and the Lazio-Abruzzi carbonate platform. Their Mesozoic-Tertiary sequences are separated by major low-angle thrust systems, which superpose the Umbria domain onto both the Marche and Lazio-Abruzzi domains, the Lazio-Abruzzi platform onto t...
The Gran Sasso chain in Central Italy is made up of an imbricate stack of eight thrust sheets, which were emplaced over the Upper Miocene—Lower Pliocene Laga Flysch. The thrust sheets are numbered from 1 to 8 in order of their decreasing elevation in the tectonic stack, and their basal thrusts are numbered from T1 to T8, accordingly. On the basis o...