Pierpaolo Pierri

• Researcher
• Researcher at University of Bari Aldo Moro

On 23 March 2018, an event of magnitude ML 3.9 occurred about 10 km from the town of Ostuni, in the Adriatic offshore. It was the most energetic earthquake in South–Central Apulia ever recorded instrumentally. On 13 February 2019, in the same area, a second ML 3.3 event was recorded. The analysis of the 2018 event shows that the ambiguity of the so...

On March 23, 2018, an event of magnitude Mw 3.7 occurred about 10 km from the town of Ostuni, in the Adriatic offshore. It was the most energetic earthquake in south-central Apulia ever recorded instrumentally. On February 13, 2019, in the same area, a second ML 3.3 event was recorded. The analysis of the 2018 event shows that the ambiguity of the...

Historical seismic catalogs report that the Gargano Promontory (southern Italy) was affected in the past by earthquakes with medium to high estimated magnitude. From the instrumental seismicity, it can be identified that the most energetic Apulian sequence occurred in 1995 with a main shock of MW = 5.2 followed by about 200 aftershocks with a maxim...

The Mw 6.0 earthquake that hit central Italy on 24 August 2016 caused an abnormally high level of destruction in the town of Amatrice. In order to clarify the role of site response in causing such a disaster, a series of ambient noise recordings acquired in the aftermath of the event are analysed here to identify site resonance properties from the...

The historical seismicity catalogs report that the Gargano area (Apulia region, southern Italy) has been site of medium to high magnitude earthquakes. Instrumental seismicity suffers of the poor coverage of the seismic stations of the RSN (National Seismic Network). To improve the seismological monitoring of the area, in 2013 the OTRIONS seismic ne...

The predictive performance of ground motion prediction equations relative to peak horizontal acceleration (PHA) defined for the Greek region were found not to benefit from the inclusion of terms accounting for site response. This can be in part due to an inadequacy of standard methods for site classification to evaluate the expected amount of PHA a...

One basic element for seismic hazard assessment is the empirical definition of ground motion prediction equations (GMPE) to estimate shaking expected for earthquakes of given magnitude and distance. GMPEs are calibrated from data of accelerometric stations, distinguishing among site categories of different lithological type (e.g. hard rocks, more o...

Although all of the main properties of a ground motion cannot be captured through a single parameter, a number of different engineering parameters has been proposed that are able to reflect either one or more ground‐motion characteristics concurrently. For many of these parameters, especially regarding Greece, there are relatively few or no predict...

In recent years, several workers have found numerous cases of sites characterised by significant azimuthal variation of dynamic response to seismic shaking. The causes of this phenomenon are still unclear, but are possibly related to combinations of geological and geomorphological factors determining a polarisation of resonance effects. To improve...

In relation to the assessment of earthquake-induced landslide hazard, this paper discusses general principles and describes implementation criteria for seismic hazard estimates in landslide-prone regions. These criteria were worked out during the preparation of a hazard map belonging to the official Italian geological cartography and they are propo...

The northernmost part of Apulia, in Southern Italy, is an emerged portion of the Adriatic plate, which in past centuries was hit by at least three disastrous earthquakes and at present is occasionally affected by seismic events of moderate energy. In the latest seismic hazard assessment carried out in Italy at national scale, the adopted seismogeni...

Northern Apulia is an emerged portion of the Adriatic microplate, representing the foreland–foredeep area of a stretch of the Apennine chain in southern Italy. The interaction between the relatively rigid microplate and the contiguous more deformable domains is responsible for the intense seismicity affecting the chain area. However strong, sometim...

The central part of the Apulia region, in southern Italy, has been generally considered practically free from significant level of seismicity, but historical documentation, geological indicators and recent instrumental observations suggest that the activity of local minor tectonic structures could have been "masked" (and partly also induced) by tha...

The presence of a structural heterogeneity between the northern part of the Adriatic plate (Central Mediterranean) and its southernmost sector was hypothesised by different authors and also confirmed recently by 3D velocity models obtained through surface wave tomography and local earthquake tomography. However, the seismological data leave some un...

The need for effective strategies for preventing and mitigating damage caused by earthquake-induced landslides has stimulated recent developments of tech-niques for the assessment of seismic-landslide exposure at a regional scale. However, for a rational risk management, a crucial element is represented by the time horizon of the hazardous events....

Most of the documented slope failures triggered by the 1980 Irpinia earthquake (Ms 6.9) occurred in the upper Sele valley epicentral area (southern Italy). The early investigations revealed some puzzling characteristics of the slope failure distribution, i.e., (i) the higher landslide concentration on the valley slopes located farther away from the...

The discovery of recent co-seismic sedimentary structures and the detection of low energy seismic activity in the Murgian plateau (Apulia - Southern Italy) motivated a more detailed examination of the tectonics in this part of the Apulian plate commonly believed to be aseismic. In particular, we examined the north-western zone where a seismic seque...

On 29 December 1993, a slump-earthflow was activated in the outskirts of Senerchia (southern Italy) in a locality named "Vadoncello". Mass movement has been active until the time of writing, at a variable rate. Maximum velocity was reached during 1995, when a seismic sequence of low magnitude (maximum 3.6) was recorded. The landslide evolution was...

Post-failure activity of the December 1993 Senerchia slump-earthflow was characterised by intermittent recession of the headscarp and earthflow movements. The retrogression showed considerable spatial variability, depending on the properties of the geological materials. The retrogressive failures were preceded by intense fissuring of the ground in...

In previous papers surface dispersion data have been combined with the results of deep seismic refraction data to derive a regionalization of the lithosphere-asthenosphere system and to investigate the presence of significant heterogeneity down to depths of 350 km along two profiles in the North European Fennoscandian area; a regionalized upper man...

The paper illustrates the tectonic activity during the Quaternary in the Murge area, a portion of the Apulian foreland in southeastern Italy. Tensional and transtensional faults are the main structural features of this area and are associated with an horst-and-graben system cutting the whole foreland ramp (the Murge area s.s. and the substratum of...

New results of tomographic processing of surface and body wave data provided some evidence of structural differences in crust-mantle transition between northern and southern part of the Apulian plate, playing an important role in the geodynamic evolution of the Central Mediterranean. In order to support the inferences derived from tomographic data...

Le caratteristiche della sismicità della Puglia settentrionale, che costituisce localmente l'area di avanfossa-avampaese dell'Appennino meridionale, sono state oggetto di un recente studio (Del Gaudio et al., 2007). Sulla base dell'integrazione di dati storici, strumentali e di informazioni geo-logico-strutturali, questo studio ha fornito indicazio...