Modelling of seismicity in southern pakistan using GIS techniques
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Modelling of seismicity in southern pakistan using GIS techniques Muhammad Jahangir Khan 1 Received: 4 April 2020 / Accepted: 25 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This study is aimed to elucidate individual fault response and peculiar earthquake characteristics in complex seismotectonic environment of southern Pakistan (Balochistan, Sindh and frontal offshore areas). The southern Pakistan is a seismic-mélange wherein earthquake prone sources are diversified and closely associated with active plate margins. The spatial patterns of seismicity are significant in reckoning seismic potential of active fault lineaments in intraplate cohorts of Arabian, Eurasian and Indian plates. The tectonic earthquakes during the period of 325 B.C to February 2020 are compiled in a catalog. This updated catalog has been thoroughly processed by standard procedures necessary for magnitude coherency, main shocks declustering, magnitude completeness etc. Since, the faulty blocks are extending beyond international borders, a wide region is outlined for cataloging and thorough screening of fault lines. The fault lineaments are digitized after geo-referencing of structural and tectonic maps. A rigorous effort is made to review literature to gather allied data sets of plate kinematics, GPS constraints across faulty blocks and slip-sense during major events. Individual fault lines are examined carefully to discriminate seismicity yield by considering their geometry and influence of seismotectonic settings. The seismicity characteristics of fault lines are used to ascribe ‘seismicity index’ that helped to rank potential faults from I (least active) to V (highly active). Kernel density maps are prepared to allure vulnerable pockets of the fault lineaments for specific magnitude classes. Seismicity Index and Kernel density models are significant to analyze spatial changes in potential magnitude strength which may be pertinent for urban planners and developers to design earthquake resistant buildings in study area. Keywords Fault response . Seismicity index . Kernel Density . Earthquake . Southern Pakistan
Introduction The seismologists are making efforts to study seismicity patterns in diversified seismotectonic zones of southern Pakistan (Ali and Khan 2015; Aslam and Naseer 2020). The southern Pakistan is a seismic-mélange wherein earthquake prone sources are closely associated with active plate margins and faulted cohorts in intraplate regions of Arabian, Eurasian and Indian plates. The faulted blocks provide anisotropic medium of geological layers across their planes and enable the phenomenon to trap elastic energy in creeping blocks or drifting plate margins (Barnhart et al. 2014). In seismically active regions, the accumulating stresses weaken the rock strength to
Communicated by: H. Babaie * Muhammad Jahangir Khan [email protected] 1
Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Bahria University Karachi Campus, Karachi, Pakistan
undergone plausible brittle def
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