Stability of fault plane solutions for the major N-Italy seismic events in 2012

•We compare fault plane solutions retrieved inverting at different cutoff periods.•Short cutoff period inversion of moment tensor for shallow events is preferred.•The retrieved solutions agree with independent geodynamic models of the area.

We propose a critical analysis of the moment tensor solutions of the major seismic events that affected northern Italy in 2012. Inverting full waveforms at regional distance using the non-linear method named INPAR, we investigate period dependent resolution that affects in particular the solutions of shallow events. This is mainly due to the poor resolution of Mzx and Mzy components of the seismic tensor when inverting signals whose wavelengths significantly exceed the source depth. As a consequence, instability affects both source depth and fault plane solution retrieval, and spurious large Compensated Linear Vector Dipole components arise. The inversion performed at cutoff periods shorter than 20 s reveals in many cases different details of the rupture process, which are supported by independent geodynamical arguments. Thus we conclude that inversion of full waveforms at cutoff period as short as possible should be preferred.