Structure and rheology of lithosphere in Italy and surrounding

We define the structure and rheology of the lithosphere in Italy and surrounding, combining the cellular velocity models derived from nonlinear tomographic inversion with the distribution vs. depth of hypocentres to assess the brittle properties of the Earth’s crust. We average, over cells sized 1×1 degree, the mechanical properties of the uppermost 60 km of the Earth, along with seismicity, grouping hypocentral depths in 4-km intervals. For most of the cells, the earthquake energy is concentrated in the upper crust (4–12 km). For some regions, where orogenic processes occur, the release of earthquake energy is shallower and limited to the uppermost 10 km of the crust. Ambiguities in the structural models are minimized considering the hypocentral distribution, mainly to define the location of the Moho boundary, when its identification, based on shear-wave velocities, is not straight- forward.