Tettonica

The Euganean Thermal Basin includes internationally known spa resorts. It covers an area of approximately 23 km2 with 134 mining concessions. Approximately 250 wells are drilled in bedrock-hosted thermal aquifers reaching a depth of over 1000 meters. The annual consumption of thermal water in the area is about 16 million cubic meters. The thermal waters are meteoric and are probably sourced in the Lessini Mountains and plateaus to the north where they infiltrate underground and heat up following the local geothermal gradient. The thermal basin is located along the steep NW-trending Schio-Vicenza fault system, which bounds the undeformed foreland block of the ‘Lessini-Berici-Euganei’ from the foredeep of the eastern Southern Alps. Despite the lack of significant seismicity, geodynamic, geomorphologic, and structural considerations suggest that the fault system is active. Among the structural evidence is the presence in Abano Terme of a travertine mound deformed by a fracture system through which hot water traveled to the surface until the 1960’s. The seepage of thermal water seems to occur along extensional fractures within a local trans-tensional zone bound by strike-slip fault segments affecting the Mesozoic carbonate reservoir buried beneath Quaternary deposits.