ZAGREB, 5 June (Hina) – An international team of scientists has completed a research cruise during which 20 new seismographs were deployed on the seafloor of the South Adriatic Basin at depths exceeding 1,000 metres, the Faculty of Science in Zagreb (PMF) said on Friday.
Installed at the end of May, the instruments will remain on the seabed for about a year, collecting high-quality seismic data to help study the deep structure of the Earth’s crust and lithosphere in the southern Adriatic region.
The cruise was conducted aboard the Italian National Research Council (CNR) vessel Gaia Blu, one of Europe’s most advanced oceanographic research ships. The deployment is part of the South Adriatic Passive Seismic Experiment (TRACE), an international project aimed at improving the understanding of geodynamic processes in the area.
Scientists say the southern Adriatic is a key zone for studying active tectonic processes in the Mediterranean, with implications for understanding the development of regional seismic zones.
Seismologist Josip Stipčević of the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Science said the data will enable the most detailed models to date of the region’s deep subsurface structure and provide new insights into the processes that generate earthquakes in the area.
The project is expected to help address open questions in regional seismology, including the recurrence of major earthquakes such as those in Dubrovnik (1667) and in the Bar and Ulcinj areas (1979), as well as the mechanisms behind them and possible future seismic scenarios.
Stipčević also noted that 20 additional land-based seismic stations are being installed around Dubrovnik, eastern Herzegovina and Montenegro as part of a Croatian Science Foundation project on the Dubrovnik fault zone (MDuFAULT), which he leads.
The combination of marine and land data from the TRACE and MDuFAULT projects will, for the first time, provide a comprehensive picture of the seismic-tectonic structure of the southern Adriatic and its hinterland, improving the understanding of deep geological structures controlling earthquakes in the region.
Participating in the study are researchers from Italy, Canada, Croatia, and Montenegro, including teams from Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR-ISMAR), Dalhousie University in Canada, the Faculty of Science at the University of Zagreb, and Montenegro’s Hydro-Meteorological and Seismological Institute.
