Abstract
Over the last century the North Anatolian Fault Zone in Turkey has produced a remarkable sequence of large earthquakes. These events have now left an earthquake gap south of Istanbul and beneath the Marmara Sea, a gap that has not been filled for 250 years. Here we investigate the nature of the eastern end of this gap using microearthquakes recorded by seismographs primarily on the Princes Islands offshore Istanbul. This segment lies at the western terminus of the 1999 Mw7.4 Izmit earthquake. Starting from there, we identify a 30-km-long fault patch that is entirely aseismic down to a depth of 10 km. Our evidence indicates that this patch is locked and is therefore a potential nucleation point for another Marmara segment earthquake - a potential that has significant natural hazards implications for the roughly 13 million Istanbul residents immediately to its north.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1999 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2013 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
We acknowledge funding for the PIRES field campaign from Helmholtz-Centre Potsdam German Centre for Geosciences GFZ and Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute KOERI, Istanbul. We would like to thank the Helmholtz Foundation for funding in the frame of the ‘Young Investigators Group’ (‘From microseismicity to large earthquakes’) and the University of Auckland for institutional support. We thank J. Zschau, H. Woith and S. Baris for providing seismic recordings from the Armutlu Network (ARNET). We thank D. Kalafat (KOERI) for providing seismic recordings from regional permanent seismic stations. We thank T. Kilic and R. Kartal (AFAD) for providing seismic recordings from regional permanent seismic stations.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| University of Auckland | |
| Helmholtz Association |
