Preseismic Creep Strains Revealed by Ground Tilt Measurements in Central Italy on the Occasion of the 1997 Umbria-Marche Apennines Earthquake Sequence

Daily averaged tilt component data from four sites of the Central Apennines (Italy) revealed intermediate-term tilts of a few months as possible precursors of the seismic sequence occurred in the Umbria-Marche region during 1997. A change was also observed in the secular tectonic trend recorded at one site and referred to the same seismic sequence. The observed intermediate-term preseismic tilts are considered as the manifestation of aseismic creep episodes in the fault materials close to the tilt sites. The mechanism refers to a strain field slowly propagating from the dilatancy (focal) area to the tiltmeters, through rigid crustal blocks separated by weak transition zones with viscoelastic rheology. This propagation is thought to be the cause of the local aseismic fault slip recorded by tiltmeters. In one case such creep strains revealed to have larger amplitude and higher frequency content than those accepted for fault materials, and this was attributed to an amplified response of the heterogeneous ground surface at the site. The existence of a propagating strain field is confirmed by the different onset time delays in the preseismic tilt signals recorded at different distances from the same earthquake. In particular, the onset time delays observed at each tilt site appear to increase with increasing distance of such site from the epicentral area. At greatest distances, where the preseismic strain becomes negligible, the characteristic intermediate-term ground tilts vanish completely.