This paper documents evidence of surface faulting associated with the 6 April 2009 moderate-sized earthquake (ML 5.8, Mw 6.3) in the central Apennines of Italy, which caused major damage to the town of L’Aquila and its surroundings. Coseismic surface ruptures were mapped for a minimum distance of 2.6 km along the Paganica fault, a fault still poorly investigated relative to the other active faults nearby, which bound much wider range fronts. Surface rupture length (SRL) and maximum displacement parameters (2.6 km minimum and 10–15 cm, respectively) are in agreement with what is expected for an Mw 6.3 event in the Italian Apennines tectonic environment. Different viewpoints exist on the amount of SRL and the number of activated faults. We propose a pattern of sympathetic and secondary slip on an array of faults around the master seismogenic structure. Past seismicity and evidence for larger Holocene offsets on this and other capable faults nearby prove that the 2009 event is not a good reference event for assessing the seismic hazard of the region. Nevertheless, the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake once more confirmed the importance of detailed geological studies for a proper seismic hazard assessment, and it clearly illustrates the need to pay attention to moderate events and supposedly minor active faults. Indeed, this type of earthquake is rather frequent in the whole Mediterranean region and is potentially much more destructive than in the past, due to the expanding urban centers and infrastructures inside their epicentral regions and even right above the traces of capable faults

Heavy rainfall is a major factor for landslide triggering. Here, we present an inventory of 47,523 landslides triggered by two precipitation episodes that occurred in May 2023 in the Emilia-Romagna and conterminous regions (Italy). The landslides are manually mapped from a visual interpretation of satellite images and are mainly triggered by the second rainfall episode (16–17 May 2023); the inventory is entirely original, and the mapping is supplemented with field surveys at a few selected locations. The main goal of this paper is to present the dataset and to investigate the landslide distribution with respect to triggering (precipitation) and predisposing (land use, lithology, slope and distance from roads) factors using a statistical approach. The landslides occurred more frequently on steeper slopes and for the land use categories of “bare rocks and badlands” and woodlands. A weaker positive correlation is found for the lithological classes: silty and flysch-like units are more prone to host slope movements. The inventory presented here provides a comprehensive picture of the slope movements triggered in the study area and represents one of the most numerous rainfall-induced landslide inventories on a global scale. We claim that the inventory can support the validation of automatic products and that our results on triggering and predisposing factors can be used for modeling landslide susceptibility and more broadly for hazard purposes.

Starting on the day after the mainshock, we mapped in the field and compiled all the available observations on earthquake environmental effects (EEEs) caused by the $Mw$ 7.8 subduction earthquake that hit the coastal region of Ecuador on 16 April 2016 (the Pedernales earthquake). These effects include: (a) permanent ground deformation, (b) open cracks, (c) liquefaction, (d) landslides, and (e) tsunami waves. We use these observations to evaluate the macroseismic field of the Environmental Seismic Intensity (ESI‐07) scale and compare our results with published macroseismic data collected using traditional damage‐based intensity scales. We found systematic difference in the assessed earthquake intensity and in the intensity attenuation with distance. A comparison of our dataset with the macroseismic data of six instrumental large‐subduction earthquakes that occurred between Ecuador and Chile suggests that, for the Pedernales earthquake, the ESI‐07 works better in the near field, whereas damage‐based scales are more reliable in the far field. Therefore, we generate a single integrated intensity dataset for the Pedernales earthquake, including data measured with the European Macroseismic Scale 1998 (EMS‐98), the modified Mercalli (MM) scale, and the ESI‐07 scale. This new integrated macroseismic field provides reliable and comparable information on the seismogenic source, suggesting that a similar approach could be successfully applied to refine the source model of past subduction earthquakes in Ecuador and elsewhere.