Palaeoseismic behaviour of strike-slip faults in slowly deforming regions: palaeoearthquakes and long-term slip history
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Palaeoseismic behaviour of strike-slip faults in slowly deforming regions: palaeoearthquakes and long-term slip history of the Ovacık Fault (eastern Turkey) Müge Yazıcı & Cengiz Zabcı & Boris A. Natal’in & Taylan Sançar & H. Serdar Akyüz
Received: 26 March 2020 / Accepted: 15 October 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The Ovacık Fault (OF) is one of the internal structures of the Anatolian Block, located close to its eastern boundary. Although it shows a very clear surface trace, there are no instrumentally recorded surface rupturing earthquakes on this fault. This study concludes results of the first palaeoseismological trench study on the OF with the evidence for three surface rupturing earthquakes for the last 6 kyr. Structural, stratigraphical and geochronological constraints show that the oldest event happened between 4700 and 3022 BCE, whereas the penultimate event was between 2262 and 1643 BCE. The youngest event happened after 56 BCE, which we could only delimit from below because of the absence of any dateable material from the upper layers of the relevant horizons. The derived mean interevent time of these three palaeoevents is 2400 ± 765 years. We could not correlate any of these palaeoevents with historical
Highlights - We suggest that the OF is active and may generate a surface rupturing earthquake. - The mean earthquake interevent time of the OF is 2400 ± 765 years. - The slip rate estimate from cumulative offset of rivers is ~ 2.7 mm/year for the OF. M. Yazıcı (*) : C. Zabcı : B. A. Natal’in : H. S. Akyüz İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Ayazağa Yerleşkesi, Maden Fakültesi, Jeoloji Muhendisligi, 34469 Maslak, İstanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] T. Sançar Munzur Üniversitesi Aktuluk Yerleşkesi, Coğrafya Bölümü, 62000 Tunceli, Turkey
earthquakes due to the absence of records in catalogues for the region of interest. Moreover, we used cumulative offsets of the major drainages to calculate the long-term slip rate of 2.7 mm/year since the Pliocene, which exceeds slip rates of other internal faults of Anatolia almost by the factor of two. Our results do not only show significant deformation for the internal parts of Anatolia but also point out a seismic potential of the OF. Keywords Palaeoseismology . Ovacık Fault . Internal deformation . Earthquake . Turkey
1 Introduction The theory of plate tectonics suggests that the lithosphere is made of rigid plates that are deformed along their narrow boundaries and earthquakes predominantly occur along these narrow zones (Le Pichon 1968; McKenzie and Parker 1967; Morgan 1968; Wilson 1965). Nevertheless, there are remarkable numbers of earthquakes, which occur away from these narrow zones at various parts of the earth, such as Australia, Europe, Central Asia, India and China (Gordon 1998; Scholz et al. 1986; Stein 2007; Storti et al. 2003; Wiens et al. 1985). In general, the deformation between or within the plates are classified as being part of the following: (a) narrow plate boundary zones, which are responsible of about 85 to
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