Analysis of the devastating Kashmir earthquake 2005 aftershocks
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Analysis of the devastating Kashmir earthquake 2005 aftershocks Khaista Rehman 1 & S. M. Talha Qadri 2 & Aamir Ali 3 & Asghar Ali 4 & Sajjad Ahmed 4
Received: 15 September 2015 / Accepted: 26 February 2016 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2016
Abstract Along with most of the northern Pakistan and the Kashmir regions (Kashmir and eastern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Muzaffarabad and Balakot were shaken by a predominantly disastrous earthquake of magnitude Mw 7.6 in 2005. The earthquake is expected to have killed over 80,000 people and 70,000 injured, nevertheless little recognized about its aftershocks. We studied the instrumental earthquake data from the International Seismological Centre (ISC) and United Sates Geological Survey (USGS)/Preliminary Determination of Epicenters (PDE) for the period of October 2005 to March 2006. Reasenberg’s algorithm (Reasenberg in Geophys Res 90:5479-5495, 1985) was applied to identify the aftershocks from the main earthquake catalog, and a catalog of 497 aftershock sequences is assembled during the time period of October, 08 2005 to March 20, 2006. In order to explain the variation of aftershocks, several histograms of time, magnitude, depth, and hour of the day have been made. The results show that prominent variation exists within the 3 days after a main shock of Kashmir 2005 earthquake. The size distribution of aftershocks is analyzed using the Gutenberg-Richter law, and the value of b is 1.1 ± 0.07. Omori-Utsu law was used to
* Khaista Rehman [email protected]
1
National Centre of Excellence in Geology, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 25120, Pakistan
2
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan
3
Department of Earth Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan
4
Department of Geology, University of Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Peshawar 25120, Pakistan
describe the decay rates of aftershock sequences in and around Kashmir. The decay component, p, which is generally known as “p value” is calculated to be 1.58 ± 0.07. Keywords Seismicity . Aftershock analysis . Omori law . Kashmir . Pakistan
Introduction The well-known and recent earthquake of Kashmir occurred at 03:50 GMT (08:50 local time), on the morning of Saturday the 8th of October, 2005. It had a moment magnitude (Mw) of 7.6 occurred in the northern region of Pakistan (Nakata and Kumahara 2006; Peiris et al. 2008; Rehman et al. 2014). This earthquake has caused the most obvious and widespread damage in Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK) and in the eastern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly known as the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). It has been estimated that more than 80,000 people in Pakistan were killed by this earthquake (Burton et al. 2006; Wyss 2006; Peiris et al. 2008). The same authors conclude that approximately 400,000 homes were fully damaged, and over 2.8 million people made homeless. The heaviest earthquake damage is experienced in the cities of Muzaffarabad and Balakot that were close to the earthquake
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