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Potential seismogenic asperities in the Garhwal–Kumaun region, NW Himalaya: seismotectonic implications

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Abstract

The Garhwal–Kumaun region (29°–31.5°N; 77°–81°E) in NW Himalaya lies in the Central Seismic Gap where the accumulated strain energy is sufficient for a future great earthquake. A broadband seismic network is continuously monitoring the seismic activity in this region and recorded a total of 3634 well located seismic events justified within the acceptable error bars (ERZ, ERH < 5.0) from 2007 to 2018 with hypocentral distances ranging from 0 to 350 km. In the present work, frequency-magnitude distribution (b-value) and fractal dimension (Dc-value) are investigated along (NW–SE) and across (SW–NE) the strike of Garhwal–Kumaun Himalaya. The study area has been divided into three different seismogenic asperities. Our results revealed that the proximity of Rudraprayag–Chamoli region exhibits significant low b-value (0.702 ± 0.03) and Dc-value (1.38 ± 0.03) and indicates high stress accumulation. The region has witnessed 1999 Chamoli earthquake Mb 6.3 and 2017 Rudraprayag earthquake M 5.7. A detailed study of b-value and Dc-value variation as a function of depth is also examined. The composite trend in abrupt escalation of b-value is observed at depth ≈ 12 km for Garhwal region and ≈ 7 km for Kumaun region. A well demarcation of crustal heterogeneity, high stress regime and associated seismogenic asperity is plotted. The low b-value and Dc-value depth ranges are coinciding with mid-crustal ramp and exhibiting a potential zone (12–15 km) for future great earthquake in the Garhwal region.

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Data availability

Data related to this paper are generated and processed by Author (AT) at Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG) Dehradun, India. Data are available and can be downloaded from the following link (http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/257pzrpdzd).

Code availability

Plot were made using ZMAP (Wiemer, 2001). The hypocentral parameters of the events have been determined using HYPO71 program developed by Lee and Lahr (1975) which is incorporated in SEISAN software.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Dr Kalachand Sain, Director, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG), Dehradun for providing facilities and motivation to carry out this work. Our sincere thanks to the Ministry of Earth Science (MoES/P.O.(Seismo)/1(373A)/2019) and Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi for generous financial assistance toward sponsoring the project and seismic network installation in NW Himalaya. Prof. H.K Gupta is sincerely acknowledged for valuable suggestions and comments during his meet in WIHG. We are thankful to Dr C.C.Pant for providing the Kumaun Seismin network data. We are also thankful to Dr Arun Prasath, Dr Sundeep Chabak for their support in discussion and Ms Jyoti Tiwari as acknowledged for improvement of manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun, India

    Anil Tiwari & Ajay Paul

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, Graphic Era Hill University, Dehradun, India

    Rakesh Singh

  3. Department of Geology, Kumaun University, Nainital, India

    Anil Tiwari & Rajeev Upadhyay

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  1. Anil Tiwari
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(a) AT contributed to investigation, conceptualization, methodology, software handling, writing original draft, writing-review & editing, visualization. (b) AP contributed to data curation, writing-review & editing, supervision, visualization. (c) RS contributed to writing-review & editing, visualization. (d) RU contributed to supervision, writing-review & editing, visualization.

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Correspondence to Ajay Paul.

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Tiwari, A., Paul, A., Singh, R. et al. Potential seismogenic asperities in the Garhwal–Kumaun region, NW Himalaya: seismotectonic implications. Nat Hazards 107, 73–95 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-021-04574-3

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