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An Evaluation of Earthquake Hazard Potential for Different Regions in Western Anatolia Using the Historical and Instrumental Earthquake Data

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Abstract

We applied the maximum likelihood method produced by Kijko and Sellevoll (Bull Seismol Soc Am 79:645–654, 1989; Bull Seismol Soc Am 82:120–134, 1992) to study the spatial distributions of seismicity and earthquake hazard parameters for the different regions in western Anatolia (WA). Since the historical earthquake data are very important for examining regional earthquake hazard parameters, a procedure that allows the use of either historical or instrumental data, or even a combination of the two has been applied in this study. By using this method, we estimated the earthquake hazard parameters, which include the maximum regional magnitude \( \hat{M}_{\max } , \) the activity rate of seismic events and the well-known \( \hat{b} \) value, which is the slope of the frequency-magnitude Gutenberg-Richter relationship. The whole examined area is divided into 15 different seismic regions based on their tectonic and seismotectonic regimes. The probabilities, return periods of earthquakes with a magnitude M ≥ m and the relative earthquake hazard level (defined as the index K) are also evaluated for each seismic region. Each of the computed earthquake hazard parameters is mapped on the different seismic regions to represent regional variation of these parameters. Furthermore, the investigated regions are classified into different seismic hazard level groups considering the K index. According to these maps and the classification of seismic hazard, the most seismically active regions in WA are 1, 8, 10 and 12 related to the Aliağa Fault and the Büyük Menderes Graben, Aegean Arc and Aegean Islands.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their sincere thanks to Prof. Dr. A. Kijko for providing the computer program MATLAB. Also, they thank Prof. Dr. T.M. Tsapanos for the suggestions made in order for the paper to be improved. The authors are grateful to Karadeniz Technical University (Turkey) for partially supporting this work (project no.: 2010.112.007.4). The authors would like to express their gratitude to Dr. A. Kijko, Editor PAGEOPH and two anonymous reviewers for their generous comments and thorough review of this manuscript, which has improved the quality significantly. The GMT system (Wessel and Smith, 1998) was used to plot Fig. 1.

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  1. Department of Geophysics, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey

    Yusuf Bayrak

  2. Geology Department, Atatürk University, Erzurum, Turkey

    Erdem Bayrak

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Bayrak, Y., Bayrak, E. An Evaluation of Earthquake Hazard Potential for Different Regions in Western Anatolia Using the Historical and Instrumental Earthquake Data. Pure Appl. Geophys. 169, 1859–1873 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-011-0439-3

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