Surface rupture and slip distribution along the Karadere segment of the 17 August 1999 İzmit and the western section of the 12 November 1999 Düzce, Turkey, earthquakes

On 17 August 1999 the M_w 7.5 İzmit, Turkey, earthquake produced surface rupture in excess of 120 km, and perhaps as much as 200 km, with up to 5 m of dextral slip, along a western portion of the North Anatolian fault zone. The 12 November 1999 M_w 7.1 Düzce, Turkey, earthquake produced a 40-km-long surface rupture, including 9 km of rupture overlap with the eastern end of the August event. Our mapping focused on the 40-km-long Karadere rupture segment, the easternmost segment of the August event, as well as on the western 20 km of the November rupture. Maximum dextral slip along the Karadere segment is approximately 1.5 m, and the average slip on this segment is close to 1 m. Although slip along the Karadere segment is considerably less than that on segments to the west, this segment is of particular interest for three reasons: (1) the western boundary of the Karadere segment is defined by the most striking structural discontinuity along the entire August surface rupture (i.e., a 5-km-wide zone of no surface rupture, as well as a 25° change in trend from E-W to ENE), and such a discontinuity may have important implications for rupture dynamics; (2) surface rupture terminates at the east end of the Karadere rupture segment at a 1.5- to 3-km-wide extensional step-over at Eften Lake; and (3) the 12 November 1999 Düzce earthquake reruptured the easternmost 9 km of the Karadere segment, raising interesting questions about rupture dynamics and interactions between events on adjacent fault segments. The details of the 17 August 1999 and 12 November 1999 surface rupture traces suggest that rupture may have partially propagated across the Eften Lake extensional step-over, although this step-over seems to have acted as an effective barrier to rupture propagation.