
Paola VannucchiUniversità degli Studi di Firenze - University of Florence · Scienze della Terra - Earth Sciences
Paola Vannucchi
Ph.D
About
260
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Introduction
Paola Vannucchi is professor of Structural Geology and Tectonics at the Earth Science Department of the University of Florence (Italy) and adjunct researcher at the National Institute of Oceanography and Seismology (INOGS) in Trieste (Italy). She conducts research in subduction systems, both modern sub-marine systems and fossil examples exhumed in mountain belts, and continental evolution.
Additional affiliations
September 2012 - present
November 2007 - August 2012
Publications
Publications (260)
The Brazilian Equatorial Margin is formed by several basins and we have studied the East Ceará and Potiguar extending for over ~600 km with a seismic grid with >10k km of 2D lines. First part of our study supports that the rift evolution occurred in several extension phases with different characteristics and differences in sediment deposits. The de...
The Inner Northern Apennines (Italy) are a region with a dominant N-S to NNW-SSE fault system, but dissected and offset by several E-W to NE-SW trending structures and lineaments. The knowledge about the nature of these transverse structures, their origin, activity and role in current tectonic motions is limited and debated. To better establish the...
The Brazilian Equatorial Margin (BEM) is interpreted as a transform margin, where the last segment opened during Gondwana rifting. However, margin evolution, and break‐up age remain unconstrained. We interpret >10k km of crustal‐scale seismic images extending along ∼600 km of the margin calibrated with drillholes. We determine the style and timing...
Caldera collapses are paramount volcano-tectonic features because they form during hazardous explosive volcanic
eruptions, they are ideal sites for geothermal development and mineral resources exploitation, and also
because they preserve the evidence of the interaction between caldera magmatism and the regional tectonic
processes. Despite this, man...
The Brazilian Equatorial Margin (BEM) is classically interpreted as a transform margin formed during the last phases of the Atlantic rifting of Gondwana. However, rift kinematics and subsequent continental break up has not been constrained. We present a new model based on the interpretation of a 2D seismic grid acquired along the BEM. The datasets,...
Sparse available data and lack of seafloor spreading magnetic lineaments during the Cretaceous Magnetic Quiet Zone have caused uncertainty on the kinematic of the rifting and age of break up along the Brazilian Equatorial Margin (BEM). Here we present some new interpretation results aiming discussing the basement structure, the style of the synrift...
The formation of the >1000 km long Brazilian Equatorial Margin (BEM) is not yet understood. Limited accessibility of data has caused its classification as a transform margin based on its geodynamic situation during the separation of Africa and South America. However, a newly available grid of seismic reflection lines imaging the entire crust along...
Dynamics of Plate Tectonics and Mantle Convection, written by specialists in the field, gathers state-of-the-art perspectives on the dynamics of plate tectonics and mantle convection. Plate tectonics is a unifying theory of solid Earth sciences. In its initial form, it was a kinematic theory that described how the planet’s surface is fragmented int...
We document an exhumed plate boundary shear zone—a subduction channel—developed at the contact between a fossil Cretaceous‐Eocene accretionary prism (Ligurian Units) and the underlying continent‐derived nappes of the Northern Apennines. The subduction channel, referred to as the Norsi‐Cavo Complex (NCC), is continuously exposed for ∼10 km along str...
Non-volcanic tremor is a particularly enigmatic form of seismic activity. In its most studied subduction zone setting, tremor typically occurs within the plate interface at or near the shallow and deep edges of the interseismically locked zone. Detailed seismic observations have shown that tremor is composed of repeating small low-frequency earthqu...
Significance
This study proposes a geological mechanism for creating continental crust and lithosphere. When continents collide, the typical embayments and protrusions along their rifted margins make it likely that fragments of seafloor will be trapped within the growing mountain belt. These become preferential centers of sedimentation that eventua...
The Nicobar Fan lies within the north-eastern Indian Ocean between the Ninety-East Ridge and Sunda Arc. The fan forms part of the Bengal–Nicobar Fan System and is among the oldest and largest submarine fans on Earth. Previous U–Pb zircon studies of the Nicobar and Bengal fans indicate the Himalaya as the dominant sediment source, making these fans...
Tectonic or subduction erosion refers to the removal of upper-plate material from the forearc at convergent margins. Subduction erosion has been suggested to represent a major process associated with the transfer of crustal material into the Earth’s mantle at subduction zones. However, few studies have attempted to trace the fate of eroded forearc...
Using analogue techniques, we attempted to model the complex tectonic deformation pattern observed along the North-Anatolian Fault in the Sea of Marmara from morpho-bathymetry and seismic reflection images. In particular this paper focuses on the so-called Cinarcik segment of the fault connecting the eastern Izmit segment, which entirely ruptured d...
Serpentinization greatly affects the physical and chemical properties of lithospheric mantle. Here we address the fate of serpentinized peridotites and their influence over an entire Wilson cycle. We document the near-surface journey of serpentinized subcontinental peridotites exhumed during rifting and continental breakup, reactivated as buoyant m...
This study addresses the crustal segmentation of the Brazilian equatorial margin (BEM) controlled by the Romanche fracture zone (RFZ). It uses a combination of satellite and marine gravity anomalies and seismic reflection data to constrain the continent-ocean crust transition. We propose a simplified evolution model of the BEM that involves dextral...
Circular to elliptical topographic depressions, isolated or organized in trails, have been observed on the modern seabed in different contexts and water depths. Such features have been alternatively interpreted as pockmarks generated by fluid flow, as sediment waves generated by turbidity currents, or as a combination of both processes. In the latt...
The Çınarcık Basin is the easternmost deep depression of the Sea of Marmara and its formed at a major overstep of the NAF. The transtensive fault segment representing the northern boundary is the Çınarcık basin which is marked by a steep slope scarp. It connects to the Istanbul NAF segment to west; with the Izmit segment to the east, which ruptured...
Distinct differences were observed in geochemical signatures in sediments from two sites drilled in the upper plate of the Costa Rica margin during Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 334. The upper 80 m at Site U1379, located on the outer shelf, shows pore water non‐steady state conditions characteristic of a declining methane flux...
Block-in-matrix rock assemblages — such as mélanges — are structurally complex units whose fabric is primarily defined, not by planar or linear features as most rock units are, but by the orientation and aspect ratio of irregularly shaped blocks. Despite this, previous attempts to quantitatively characterize mélange fabrics have predominantly focus...
Marine transform faults and associated fracture zones (MTFFZs) cover vast stretches of the ocean floor, where they play a key role in plate tectonics, accommodating the lateral movement of tectonic plates and allowing connections between ridges and trenches. Together with the continental counterparts of MTFFZs, these structures also pose a risk to...
Although Costa Rica is a relatively small region along the Central American Volcanic Arc (CAVA), its fascinating geology records several interesting examples of recent arc evolution. The forearc at present is in a state of subduction erosion, ranging from ‘moderate’ long-term rates of ~100 km³/km/Ma beneath Nicoya Peninsula to ‘extreme’ short-durat...
Scaly fabric was first described early in the development of Geology, and has experienced a recent renaissance with the realization that it may play a key role in the shallow coseismic deformation of plate boundary faults, such as the M9 Tohoku-Oki megathrust event. The fabric itself is an anastomosing network of polished surfaces. It is often pres...
In this study, we propose a new depositional mechanism for the formation of sea floor depression features similar to pockmark trails, but generated by the interplay between turbidity currents and fluid migration. By using high-resolution 3D seismic data from offshore Ceará State (Brazil), we show how vertically stacked and upslope migrating sedimen...
Sediment volume at the trench and topographic highs on the incoming plate are two of the main factors controlling whether a forearc will undergo subduction erosion or accretion. On oceanic plates, topographic highs such as large seamount complexes are commonly associated with significant volumes of flanking volcaniclastic sediments in the form of >...
The 2011 Tōhoku-Oki earthquake revealed that co-seismic displacement along the plate boundary megathrust can propagate to the trench. Co-seismic slip to the trench amplifies hazards at subduction zones, so its historical occurrence should also be investigated globally. Here we combine structural and experimental analyses of core samples taken offsh...
Subduction zone interface layers are often conceived to be heterogeneous, polyrheological zones analogous to exhumed mélanges. Mélanges typically contain mechanically strong blocks within a weaker matrix. However, our geomechanical study of the Osa Mélange, SW Costa Rica shows that this mélange contains blocks of altered basalt which are now weaker...
The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) is a dextral transform fault that divides the Eurasian and Anatolian plates. Transform shear in east Turkey is localized along a single fault system, which branches into three segments toward the west. The northernmost of these branches is the most seismically active in historic time and accumulated the highest amoun...
Drilling the input materials of the north Sumatran subduction zone, part of the 5000 km long Sunda subduction zone system and the origin of the Mw ∼9.2 earthquake and tsunami that devastated coastal communities around the Indian Ocean in 2004, was designed to groundtruth the material properties causing unexpectedly shallow seismogenic slip and a di...
Sediments tell a tsunami story
Trying to understand where major earthquakes and tsunamis might occur requires analysis of the sediments pouring into a subduction zone. Thick sediments were expected to limit earthquake and tsunami size in the Sumatran megathrust event in 2004, but the magnitude 9.2 earthquake defied expectations. Hüpers et al. analy...
The tectonic processes of subduction erosion — where upper plate material is entrained within the subduction zone fault as it migrates upwards — and accretion — where oceanic material is offscraped or underplated to the upper plate — are traditionally considered to operate over laterally extensive portions of convergent margins, with sediment volum...
The Osa Mélange, together with the Osa Igneous Complex, comprise an accreted igneous terrane located in southwest Costa Rica that forms the forearc of the erosive Middle America Subduction Zone at the depth of seismic nucleation. The tectonic setting in which this mélange formed remains unconstrained with both the ocean trench (DiMarco et al., 1995...
A holistic view of the Bengal–Nicobar Fan system requires sampling the full sedimentary section of the Nicobar Fan, which was achieved for the first time by International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 362 west of North Sumatra. We identified a distinct rise in sediment accumulation rate (SAR) beginning ∼9.5 Ma and reaching 250–350 m/Myr...
Analogue modelling remains one of the best methods for investigating progressive deformation of pull apart systems in strike slip faults that are poorly known. Analogue model experiments for the North Anatolian Fault (NAF) system around the Sea of Marmara are extremely rare in the geological literature. Our purpose in this work is to monitor the re...
The Osa Mélange, together with the Osa Igneous Complex, comprise an accreted igneous terrane located in southwest Costa Rica that forms the forearc of the erosive Middle America Subduction Zone at the depth of seismic nucleation. The tectonic setting in which this mélange formed remains unconstrained with both the ocean trench (DiMarco et al., 1995...
The relative rates of creation and destruction of continental crust at subduction zones are a key factor shaping the evolution of continental crust through time. Central America, arguably the best studied place where subduction erosion has been documented, is used here to assess past rates and modes of forearc recycling. Drilling from Guatemala to...
Pacific drill sites offshore Central America provide the unique opportunity to study the evolution of large explosive volcanism and the geotectonic evolution of the continental margin back into the Neogene. The temporal distribution of tephra layers established by tephrochonostratigraphy in Part 1 indicates a nearly continuous highly explosive erup...
The Osa Mélange, together with the Osa Igneous Complex, comprise an accreted igneous terrane located in southwest Costa Rica that forms the forearc of the erosive Middle America Subduction Zone at the depth of seismic nucleation. The tectonic setting in which this mélange formed remains unconstrained with both the ocean trench (DiMarco et al., 1995...
The Ceará Plateau offshore Fortaleza holds some particular characteristics when compared to the other seamounts of the Brazilian Equatorial Margin (BEM). Not only it is the largest and the closest to the continent, it is also located at the boundary between the continental and the oceanic crusts, while all the others seamounts along the BEM are loc...
Here we propose a new framework for forearc evolution that focuses on the potential feedbacks between subduction tectonics, sedimentation, and geomorphology that take place during an extreme event of subduction erosion. These feedbacks can lead to the creation of a "depositionary forearc," a forearc structure that extends the traditional division o...
The Costa Rica Seismogenesis Project (CRISP) drilled the Pacific margin of the Middle America Trench just north of where the Cocos Ridge enters the subduction zone, resulting in basal erosion of the upper plate. Here we report the orientations of the maximum horizontal principal stress (SHmax) from borehole breakouts detected by logging-while-drill...
The Middle America subduction zone is a textbook example of the subduction erosion tectonic process—accounting for half of modern subduction zones—which causes material from the forearc to be entrained into the plate boundary interface as it migrates upwards (Vannucchi et al., 2012). The Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, lies above the seismogenic portion...
Recycling of upper plate crust in subduction zones, or ‘subduction erosion’, is a major mechanism of crustal destruction at convergent margins. However, assessing the impact of eroded crust on arc magmas is difficult owing to the compositional similarity between the eroded crust, trench sediment and arc crustal basement that may all contribute to a...
Our paper (Vannucchi et al., 2015) focuses on geologic evidence for shock metamorphism found at the epicentral region of the 1908 Tunguska event. None of the currently proposed bolide explanations for the 1908 event can produce the shock pressures indicated by the geological evidence described in Vannucchi et al. (2015). If the 1908 event would hav...
Shock metamorphism is rarely found at the surface of the Earth. The most used structures to identify shock metamorphism are “true Planar Deformation Features” (PDFs) in quartz, now accepted as diagnostic indicators of a meteorite impact. Here we present several lines of evidence for shock metamorphism and PDFs developed in quartz occurring on sampl...
In the first decade of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) 2003-2013, drilling expeditions in the Nankai Trough Kumano transect, the Costa Rica Osa Peninsula transect, and the Japan Trench provided great insights into deformation processes in subduction zone forearcs. In pursuit of the IODP's objective of investigating the onset of seismog...
A primary objective of Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 344 was to understand the processes that generate earthquakes along the subduction thrust at erosive plate margins. Fundamental to this objective is determining the nature of the upper plate seaward of the seismogenic zone. Site U1380 is located in the upper plate seaward of...
Apatite fi ssion-track (AFT) analyses were performed on 16 sandstone samples from a tectonic mélange unit exposed in three tectonic windows located near the inferred front of the early Miocene subduction sys-tem of the Northern Apennines of Italy. The tectonic windows display a block-on-block tectonic mélange present under the Ligurian Units. The m...
Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 334 to southern Costa Rica, Central America, documented unprecedented subduction erosion in an area of active seismic slip. Widespread subduction erosion of the upper plate initiated when the Cocos Ridge, an overthickened aseismic ridge, arrived at the Middle America Trench. Subduction erosion was...
Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 334 to southern Costa Rica, Central America, documented unprecedented subduction erosion in an area of active seismic slip. Widespread subduction erosion of the upper plate initiated when the Cocos Ridge, an overthickened aseismic ridge, arrived at the Middle America Trench. Subduction erosion was...
In the Northern Apennines of Italy the Ligurian and Subligurian Units
(LSU) represent far-travelled/allochthonous units which, since early
Miocene to Recent, migrated towards NE, above the Tuscan-Umbrian
foredeep deposits, reaching the present-day frontal ranges of the chain.
In the NE-facing side of the western Northern Apennines the present-day
g...
The Costa Rica Seismogenesis Project (CRISP) is an experiment to understand the processes that control nucleation and seismic rupture of large earthquakes at erosional subduction zones. Integrated Ocean Drililng Program (IODP) Expedition 334 by R/V JOIDES Resolution is the first step toward deep drilling through the aseismic and seismic plate bound...
The Costa Rica Seismogenesis Project (CRISP) is an experiment to understand the processes that control nucleation and seismic rupture of large earthquakes at erosional subduction zones. Integrated Ocean Drililng Program (IODP) Expedition 334 by R/V JOIDES Resolution is the first step toward deep drilling through the aseismic and seismic plate bound...