New deep electrical resistivity tomography in the High Agri Valley basin (Basilicata, Southern Italy)

Abstract

The Agri Valley (Basilicata Region) is the most important area in Europe for onshore oil production. Moreover, the High Agri Valley extensional basin is among the Italian regions with the highest seismogenic potential. Therefore, the area is well investigated but even if deep data are available, the geometry of the pre-quaternary bedrock, the location of the main fault systems bordering the basin and the recent tectonic evolution of the basin are still debated. The aim of this work is to define the morphology of the pre-quaternary substrate below the valley, the thickness of the quaternary alluvial deposits and to contribute to the knowledge of the geological-structural characteristics of the basin of the High Agri Valley, by a new multichannel deep electrical resistivity tomography (DERT) data. The valley was previously characterized by DERT measurements crossing the valley, and now we present a new deep longitudinal acquisition. The new high-resolution electrical images allow us to improve previous reconstruction of the complex geometry of the basin and to highlight the irregular shape of the basin, bordered by shallow-depth faults and filled by Pleistocene alluvial deposits, with a more detailed scenario of fault-bounded blocks forming different depocentres separated by intrabasinal highs.

Keywords:

• DERT
• quaternary fault network
• Southern Italy
• High Agri Valley

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the student, Maria Carmela Miraglia, of the University of Basilicata for her contribution on this work during her bachelor’s degree. Moreover, the authors thank all the people who went in field for the long data acquisition (Gregory De Martino, Giuseppe Calamita, Marianna Balasco, Luigi Capozzoli). The authors thank Federico Frishanger (Geostudi Astier) for his help on the 3D inversion by ERTLab software. Finally, Enzo Rizzo thanks the director of the CNR-IMAA, Dr. Vincenzo Lapenna, for his continue support to Hydrogeosite Laboratory research activities. Finally, the authors thank the two anonymous reviewers who help us to improve the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).