Earth, Planets and Space volume 76 , Article number: 85 Cite this article. Metrics details. Recent geodetic data suggest that a fraction of the Adria—Europe convergence is still being accommodated in the Eastern Alps.
However, the historical seismicity records along the easternmost segment of the PAF are ambiguous, and instrumental records indicate that seismotectonic deformation is mostly concentrated in the adjacent Southern Alps and Dinarides. Both electron spin resonance ESR and optically stimulated luminescence OSL dating methods can be used to date coseismic slip with a combined range covering a few decades to a couple of million years in slowly deforming fault zones, such as the PAF.
Since the saturation doses of the quartz ESR signals are larger than quartz and feldspar OSL, ESR enables establishing a maximum age of the last resetting event of the system, while OSL allows constraining their minimum age when the signal is in saturation.
We collected fault gouge samples from three localities along the easternmost segment of the PAF. The obtained ages suggest that the studied segment of the PAF could be considered at least as a potentially active fault. This article deals with the Quaternary activity of one of the longest faults in the European Alps that has not had strong instrumental earthquakes i. A recurring problem in characterizing past and present regional deformation patterns in many regions is constraining the timing of fault activity.
Notwithstanding purely academic aspects, the identification and characterization of active faults e. Instrumental earthquake records do not necessarily help to identify active faults, and geodetic monitoring may fail to recognize active fault segments in case of locked faults and low deformation rates. The problem may be exacerbated by long or unknown recurrence rates of large earthquakes in regions with low overall deformation rates such as the Alps and the Dinarides Cheloni et al.
