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Historical intermediate-depth earthquakes in the southern Aegean Sea Benioff zone: modeling their anomalous macroseismic patterns with stochastic ground-motion simulations

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Abstract

We model the macroseismic damage distribution of four important intermediate-depth earthquakes of the southern Aegean Sea subduction zone, namely the destructive 1926 M = 7.7 Rhodes and 1935 M = 6.9 Crete earthquakes, the unique 1956 M = 6.9 Amorgos aftershock (recently proposed to be triggered by a shallow event), and the more recent 2002 M = 5.9 Milos earthquake, which all exhibit spatially anomalous macroseismic patterns. Macroseismic data for these events are collected from published macroseismic databases and compared with the spatial distribution of seismic motions obtained from stochastic simulation, converted to macroseismic intensity (Modified Mercalli scale, IMM). For this conversion, we present an updated correlation between macroseismic intensities and peak measures of seismic motions (PGA and PGV) for the intermediate-depth earthquakes of the southern Aegean Sea. Input model parameters for the simulations, such as fault dimensions, stress parameters, and attenuation parameters (e.g. back-arc/along anelastic attenuation) are adopted from previous work performed in the area. Site-effects on the observed seismic motions are approximated using generic transfer functions proposed for the broader Aegean Sea area on the basis of VS30 values from topographic slope proxies. The results are in very good agreement with the observed anomalous damage patterns, for which the largest intensities are often observed at distances > 100 km from the earthquake epicenters. We also consider two additional “prediction” but realistic intermediate-depth earthquake scenarios, and model their macroseismic distributions, to assess their expected damage impact in the broader southern Aegean area. The results suggest that intermediate-depth events, especially north of central Crete, have a prominent effect on a wide area of the outer Hellenic arc, with a very important impact on modern urban centers along northern Crete coasts (e.g. city of Heraklion), in excellent agreement with the available historical information.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. John Douglas and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments, which helped to improve the manuscript. This work has been partly supported by the 3D-SEGMENTS project of the ARISTEIA-I call funded by EC European Social Fund and the Greek Secretariat of Research and Technology. C.P. and M.S. also acknowledge the partial support from the HELPOS (MIS 5002697) project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geophysical Laboratory, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Ch. Kkallas, C. B. Papazachos & Ch. Ventouzi

  2. U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    D. Boore

  3. Institute of Engineering Seismology and Earthquake Engineering (EPPO-ITSAK), Thessaloniki, Greece

    B. N. Margaris

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  1. Ch. Kkallas
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  2. C. B. Papazachos
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  4. Ch. Ventouzi
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Correspondence to Ch. Kkallas.

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The intermediate-depth earthquake data used in Fig. 12 are available at http://geophysics.geo.auth.gr/ss/ (last accessed December 2017). The EXSIM_DMB code used for the simulations is available at http://www.daveboore.com/software_online.html (last accessed December 2017). Macroseismic intensities of historical events were collected from the database of macroseismic information for the Aegean area (Papazachos et al. 1997b), available upon request, as well as from the online bulletin of the International Seismological Center (http://www.isc.ac.uk/) and the online archives of the Bureau Central Sismologique Français (http://www.franceseisme.fr/). Broadband velocity-sensor data were collected from permanent Greek seismological networks, operated by the Hellenic Unified Seismological Network (HUSN), available to the public upon request from individual HUSN members. Strong motion data employed in this work were collected from the permanent networks operated by the Institute of Engineering Seismology and Earthquake Engineering (ITSAK) and the National Observatory of Athens, which are also available upon request. Several plots were made using the Generic Mapping Tools version 4 (Wessel and Smith 1998; http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt/, last accessed December 2017).

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Kkallas, C., Papazachos, C.B., Boore, D. et al. Historical intermediate-depth earthquakes in the southern Aegean Sea Benioff zone: modeling their anomalous macroseismic patterns with stochastic ground-motion simulations. Bull Earthquake Eng 16, 5121–5150 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-018-0342-8

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