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Is there activity switching among the continental transform faults in the Eastern Mediterranean region?

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Abstract

The historical and instrumental seismicity records along the continental transform faults in the Eastern Mediterranean region represent periodicities within centennial scales. Half a century ago, it was suggested that the spatiotemporal sequences of millennial-scale historical seismicity along the interplate structures represent seismicity switching between the North Anatolian Fault Zone and the East Anatolian Fault Zone. However, many individual historical seismicity catalogs published in the last decade indicate a comparable number of earthquakes in the North Anatolian and Dead Sea fault zones, but not in the East Anatolian Fault Zone. Seismicity records of the instrumental period indicate that the North Anatolian Fault Zone is currently at its peak level of activity. On the other hand, it is well known from the historical records that the seismically quiescent instrumental period of the Dead Sea Fault Zone is not representative of its potential. The comparison of various individual historical earthquake catalogs implies a successive activity for the North Anatolian and Dead Sea fault zones, with a discernible time delay. This observation lends supports to elastic coupling between these continental transform faults, resulting from the direct interaction between the movements of the Arabian and Anatolian plates. The evaluation of both historical and instrumental periods together reveals a possibility to speculate that the Dead Sea Fault Zone could enter a more active phase in the near future, potentially exhibiting a time lag in relation to the activity observed in the North Anatolian Fault Zone.

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Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the late K. C. A. Burke (1929–2018) for his encouragement to write this article as an individual paper and for fruitful discussions, to F. Şaroğlu and F. Bulut for enlightening discussions on the earlier versions, to B. Kaypak and B. Çıvgın for their support on the digitized database of the seismotectonic map of Türkiye, and to reviewers M. Bohnhoff, B. Rojay and the editor in chief U. Riller for their constructive reviews and suggestions improved the manuscript.

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  1. Niğde Ömer Halisdemir Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Jeoloji Mühendisliği Bölümü, 51240, Niğde, Türkiye

    Alper Gürbüz

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531_2023_2327_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplementary file1 Supplementary Figure S1. a) Mallet’s ‘Seismographic Map of the World’ was published in 1857. b) Famous Irish seismologist Robert Mallet (1810–1881). c) The Eastern Mediterranean region of the map showing the higher seismic activity along the Dead Sea Fault Zone and in eastern Türkiye relative to the low seismic activity of the North Anatolian Fault Zone. (PDF 2740 KB)

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Gürbüz, A. Is there activity switching among the continental transform faults in the Eastern Mediterranean region?. Int J Earth Sci (Geol Rundsch) 112, 1891–1900 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00531-023-02327-0

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