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Interpreting Campi Flegrei Unrest Through Integrated Seismic Tomography and Earthquake Analysis: Implications for Fault Reactivation and Hazard

The Campi Flegrei caldera is one of the most critical examples of long-lasting volcanic unrest without eruption, posing major challenges for its interpretation and crisis management. Since 2005, renewed uplift, shallow seismicity, and enhanced degassing have generated a rich multidisciplinary dataset, offering new opportunities to investigate the physical processes controlling unrest evolution and its potential outcomes.

Recent high-resolution seismic tomography [1] provides a detailed image of the subsurface architecture beneath Campi Flegrei, revealing a shallow low-permeability caprock overlying an overpressured, steam-rich hydrothermal reservoir at ~2–4 km depth, underlain by a mechanically competent basement. This structural configuration constrains how pressure accumulates and is redistributed within the system, exerting a primary control on ground deformation and seismicity. Complementary analyses of earthquake source properties[2] and spatio-temporal clustering show that stress perturbations associated with reservoir pressurization and depressurization modulate fault activation during unrest. Structural studies [3] further indicate that part of the recent seismicity concentrates along pre-existing volcano-tectonic faults, including the La Pietra fault, which has hosted several of the strongest earthquakes during the current crisis. Altogether, these results provide an integrated physical framework that links subsurface structure, seismic processes, and deformation, contributing to the interpretation of unrest at Campi Flegrei and offering insights relevant to seismic hazard assessment and crisis management in densely populated volcanic areas.

References

1. De Landro et al. (2025), Nat. Comm., https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59821-z

2. Nazeri et al. (2025), Nat. Comm. Earth and Env., https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02808-x

3. Scotto di Uccio et al. (2024), Geoph. Res. Lett., https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL107680

Session: ESC-SSA Joint Session: Interpreting Volcanic Unrest and Eruption Data for Effective Crisis Management - I

Type: Oral

Room: Ballroom B

Date: 4/16/2026

Presentation Time: 08:45 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Grazia De Landro

Student Presenter: No

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