Where and when might the next major earthquakes occur?

Tehran – The occurrence of earthquakes on February 6, 2023, Mw7.8 and Mw7.5 in southern Turkey and northern Syria, on the northwestern boundary of the Arabian Plate and at the point of collision with the Anatolian massif (Eurasian plate), and the earthquake occurred on November 12, 2017 in Sarpol Zahab In the lower level of the Zagros folded belt in Iran, Mw7.3 the important question is about where and when the next major earthquakes will occur on this boundary and around the Arabian Plate.

Are upcoming strong earthquakes possible in the coming years?

The opening of the Red Sea is associated with the convergence of the Arabian and Eurasian plates.

On the leading edge of the Arabian plate, the shortening of the Zagros fold mountains in the past 10,000 years at a rate of 20 mm per year has resulted in significant episodes of coastal uplift, most recently around 1700 BC.

In the transformation, the Jordan Rift, which borders the Arabian Plate in the west, a return period of about 1,600 years has been reported for ML 5.5 events.

The palaeomagnetic record for the last 3.2 million years shows that the average rate of expansion of the Red Sea is about 20 mm/year.

There is evidence that hydrothermal activity in the Red Sea is pulsatile with a return period of 2,000 years, indicating intermittent expansion.

The Neo-Holocene tectonic record in the Zagros, Jordan Rift and Red Sea is the product of complex plate interactions and the accumulation and release of crustal stress along the plate edge.

But they also reflect the storage and release of elastic stress energy in the Arabian plate, which parallels the main deformation periods in the three deformation zones and the apparent discrepancy between the seismic moment predicted by plate kinematics and that recorded in the Zagros.

Any in-plane deformation, if detected geodically, helps assess seismic hazards.

At the beginning of 2023, about 180 million people lived on the Arabian plate, and about half of them live on the borders of this plate (about 90 million people), on the other hand, about 20 million people live in Iran – in the Zagros Mountains – and 10 million in Turkey (southeast Anatolia) and about 15 million in Egypt and Sudan, bordering the boundaries of the Arabian plate.

Therefore, more than 135 million people live on or near the borders of the Arabian Peninsula.

Earthquake hazards for cities close to these borders, such as Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, Gaziantep, Diyarbakir, Shiraz, Ahwaz, Bushehr, Bandar Abbas, Kuwait City, Doha, Dubai, Manama, Medina, Jeddah, Sana’a, Aden, and Cairo , Aley is exposed to the largest possible amount of damage caused by upcoming earthquakes on the borders of the Arabian plate.

On the other hand, the Arabian Plate currently contains 48% of the world’s oil reserves and 43% of the world’s natural gas reserves.

The Arabian Plate has experienced approximately 570 million years of continuous sedimentation, and is an ideal environment for hydrocarbon generation.

We are trying to answer this important question: What are the next most important possibilities for fault rupture in the boundary, and what are the future large seismic events that will be devastating for the cities on the edge of this plate?

The earthquakes occurred on February 6, 2023 in Turkey along the active East Anatolian Fault.

The active East Anatolian Rift System has a length of about 700 km and defines the northern boundary of the Arabian Plate with the Eurasian (Anatolian) Plate.

The friction between the masses produced by this movement releases energy in the form of earthquakes. Faults can rupture at a rate of once every few decades to hundreds of years, such as the rupture on February 6, 2023 in the East Anatolian Rift System.

Today’s movements in and around the Arabian Plate involve a wide range of tectonic processes including subduction, continental collision, seafloor spreading, intraplate magma, and continental transfer faults.

Therefore, the amount of slip, relative directions of plate motion, and possible intraplate deformation are very important for assessing seismic hazard at Arabian plate boundaries and regions within them.

The internal stress on the plate surface scale is very low and stable at the inner plate boundaries, which are more typical for rigid rigid motion in the Arabian plate. Of course, on a smaller scale, there are a few more displacements.

The geological formation of the Arabian plate

The opening of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in the south, the pressure in Turkey and Iran in the north, and the presence of shunt faults on the flanks determine the general tectonic situation around the Arabian plate.

The region near the triple junction between the Arabian, Eurasian/Anatolian, and African plates has often been a focus of studies of continental deformation and interseismic deformation behavior.

Several large earthquakes have occurred at Arabian plate boundaries, including the 7.1-magnitude earthquake in 2011 in eastern Turkey.

The Arabian plate consists mostly of the Arabian Peninsula. It extends from the west to the Sinai Peninsula and the Red Sea and from the north to the Levant in the east with the Indo-Australian plate in the Owen Rift area in the Indian Ocean to the west with the Dead Sea diversion rift. (DST) Limit.

Towards the south, the Arabian plate is constrained by a divergent boundary with the African plate called the Red Sea Rift.

To the north, the Arabian Plate has convergent boundaries with the Anatolian Plate and the Eurasian Plate, including the East Anatolian Rift, and the Zagros and Makran fold and thrust belts.

The opening of the Red Sea began at the end of the Eocene, about 34 million years ago, and the separation of Africa and Arabia occurred about 25 million years ago in the Oligocene, and since then the Arabian plate has moved towards the Eurasian plate.

The collision of the Arabian and Eurasian plates shaped the Zagros Mountains in Iran and northern Iraq.

Due to the collision of the Arabian Plate and the Eurasian Plate, some cities such as those of southwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey (which lie on the edge of the Arabian Plate) are highly seismic.

The Arabian plate is surrounded by seismically active tectonic boundaries, including the Zagros-Bedlis fault in the northwest and north, the East Anatolia fault in the northwest, the Aqaba-Dead Sea fault (ADSF) in the west and northwest, and the divergent boundaries of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in the west. The vast majority of earthquakes occur within the boundaries of the Arabian Plate.

The Arabian plate boundary is about 2,600 km in the northeast and 3,000 km in the east, and the plate thickness is about 40 km.

The Iranian Plateau lies to the north of the Arabian Plate along a wide zone of deformation, part of the Alpine-Himalayan belt between the Arabian Plate in the southwest and the Eurasian Plate in the northeast.

The Strait of Hormuz region in southern Iran has the highest seismic activity in the region, and its formation is related to the continuation of the convergent movement between the Arabian plate and the central continental plate of Iran.

The Zagros mountain belt is formed in the collision zone between the Arabian and Eurasian plates, and this active convergence has led to many earthquakes in this region.

Many earthquakes frequently occur at a depth of 2 to 15 km in the seismic layer. The rate of shortening is faster in the southeast than in the northwest, due to the counterclockwise rotation of the Arabian plate.

seismic

The entire region has significant seismic hazards. The Arabian plate is surrounded by zones of high seismicity.

Calculation of this seismic activity is of great importance for the assessment of earthquake risks and hazards, seismic zoning, and land use. Plate boundary friction has been responsible for highly destructive earthquakes in the past.

In 1138 and August 13, 1822, earthquakes with a magnitude of 7 to 7.5 caused destruction and the death of several thousand people in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

For the last major fault in the Zagros, the slip-strike mechanism is representative, i.e. in the Selakhor earthquake of January 23, 1909, magnitude 7.4 on the Dorod fault, and in the Zagros fold belt, the Sarpul Zahab earthquake of November 12, 2017, on the basement fault, Mw7.3 It is the largest recorded event in the Zagros belt.

The devastating earthquakes occurred on February 6, 2023 in southern Turkey with magnitudes 7.8 and 7.5 caused by a rupture in the northwest boundary of the Arabian Plate along the Eastern Anatolian Rift Zone.

Estimating the probability of the next important earthquake in the Arabian plate

In order to predict and evaluate the next important earthquakes, the theory of plate displacement and stress buildup on a closed fault is generally implied, along with observations of previous earthquakes on this fault and the current velocity of plate motion.

Based on this model, for the central region of the February 6, 2023 earthquake, the return period for a magnitude M7.5 earthquake is about 370 years, and for a Mw7.8 about 1,700 years.

This return time is required for stress to build up on the fault in order to cause another large earthquake.

Due to the dispersion of geodetic stations, it has not been possible to determine the slip rate for different parts of the EANA fault system, but some GPS data observed since the 1990s are available.

With this data, slip velocities on different parts of the fault can be calculated for at least the past decades.

Large earthquakes may also occur in more stable regions of the continental crust. Large amounts of elastic stress can be released on geological structures away from plate boundary faults. Plate boundaries are where the vast majority of Earth’s seismic activity occurs.

Intra-plate earthquakes have different spatial and temporal patterns than at plate boundaries. These earthquakes occur in regions where the level of tectonic stress is minimal and occur when the accumulation of local tectonic stress in active faults reaches a failure threshold.

As a result, earthquakes can occur in areas with no prior seismic history and no surface evidence of stress buildup.

Thus, the seismic hazard of such earthquakes is likely to be greater than indicated by previous earthquakes, current earthquakes, or rates of tectonic stress.

In Syria and adjacent lands in the north of the Arabian plate, the modern tectonic structure of the region is affected by displacements along the segments of the Dead Sea Transformation Fault.

The Taurus fault (Bitlis) continues to the east and then the main Zagros eruption. The shortening of the thrust belt from Palmyra against Lebanon separated the Aleppo block from the main part of the Arabian Plate. The Dead Sea Rift is active in the Levant Rift area.

The countries of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Iraq are located on the Arab plate.

The Red Sea is opening at a rate of 10 mm per year, and the Gulf of Aden is believed to be a growing rift. Westward opening occurs at a rate of approximately 3 mm per year.

As the Red Sea continued to open, the Arabian Plate finally collided with Eurasia, and the Zagros Mountains were formed.

These mountain ranges are shortening by 9 ± 3 mm per year in the southeast and 5 ± 3 mm per year in the northwest.

The Dead Sea Transform Rift lies at the Arabian plate boundary to the west and has experienced approximately 107 km of left lateral displacement since the mid-Miocene, corresponding to ~6–10 mm/yr of slip on the fault. Finally, the plate is bounded to the east by the Owen Rift Zone.

In the Dead Sea Rift System, an increase in relative motion from 5.6 to 7.5 mm per year from south to north can be observed.

Relative motions at other plate boundaries (including the Anatolian and Aegean sub-plates) are consistent with reported displacements in focal mechanisms of severe earthquakes – of magnitude greater than 6.

Data on slip velocity are available for plate boundary faults (East Anatolia fault, Dead Sea fault, and Red Sea fault).

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