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Aftershock Analyses of the Qotur Doublet-Earthquakes on 23 February 2020 in West-Azarbaijan Province, NW Iran

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Abstract

The Qotur doublet-earthquakes with magnitudes MN 5.7 and 5.9 occurred on 23 February 2020 in west Azarbaijan province near the Iran-Turkey border and was followed by many aftershocks. In this study the Qotur aftershocks sequence were relocated, by using the double-difference relocation method (HypoDD). The integrated data from Iranian Seismological Centre (IRSC) and Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD) catalogues were used. The aftershocks distribution indicates a seismic zone covering an area of approximately 15 × 10 km2 and oriented NE–SW. Depth distribution of aftershocks in the cross sections show that the focal depths decrease toward the S-SE part of the region and deeper-aftershocks are located in the N-NW part. The result presents that the dominant depth range of aftershocks is from ~ 3 to ~ 15 km. This observation suggests that the causative fault(s) of the Qotur doublet-earthquakes with striking along the northeast–southwest dip toward northwest. Probably, the Başkale fault zone is the causative fault for the Qotur doublet earthquakes.

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Data availability

All data used in this study were extracted from web sites of seismological centres, and the data is avaliable via their web-sites such as, Iranian Seismological Centre (IRSC) http://irsc.ut.ac.ir; Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD) https://deprem.afad.gov.tr/event-catalog; etc.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Prof. Carla Filomena Braitenberg Editor-in-Chief of Pure and Applied Geophysics and two reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped to improve the quality of this paper. All data used in this study were extracted from web sites of seismological centres: Iranian Seismological Centre (IRSC); International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (IIEES); Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD); International Seismological Centre (ISC); U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); Global Centroid Moment Tensor (GCMT); GeoForschungsZentrum, German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). I am grateful for their contributions to this research. The figures were prepared using Generic Mapping Tools (Wessel & Smith, 1998).

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  1. Institute of Geophysics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Mehdi Rezapour

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MR wrote the main manuscript text and MR prepared all figures and table.

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Rezapour, M. Aftershock Analyses of the Qotur Doublet-Earthquakes on 23 February 2020 in West-Azarbaijan Province, NW Iran. Pure Appl. Geophys. 181, 37–52 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-023-03406-8

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