Study of the recent geodynamic processes in the Kopet-Dag region

Abstract

The time series of the uniquely long geodetic observations of recent geodynamic processes in the Kopet-Dag region are analyzed. The regional observations of contemporary vertical movements cover a 75-year period; the zonal and local systems of leveling measurements, which provide an increased degree of spatiotemporal detail (the distance between the benchmarks is less than 1 km and the measurements are repeated with a frequency of once per month to two times per annum), have been functioning for 50 years. It is shown that during the last 40–50 years, the regional stress field in the forefront of the Main Kopet-Dag thrust and collision zone of the Turanian and Iranian plates is quasi static. The annual average trend rate of strains estimated from a set of the time series of uniquely long geodetic observations is (3–5) × 10⁻⁸ yr⁻¹, which is only one to two amplitudes of tidal deformations of the solid Earth. The local deformations in the fault zone reach the rates that are by 1.5–2 orders of magnitude higher than in the block part of the region. It is found that the segments of the Earth’s surface within the axial part of the depression experience persistent uplifting, which indicates that they do not follow the scheme of inherited evolution characteristic of the fault-block structures of the region. It is demonstrated that these anomalous uplifts can be caused by the variations in the weak seismicity in the zone of the North Ashgabat Fault.