Citation

Bohnhoff M, Bulut F, Dresen G, Malin PE, Eken T, Aktar M. Nat. Commun. 2013; 4: 1999.

Affiliation

Helmholtz-Centre Potsdam German Centre for Geosciences GFZ, Telegrafenberg, 14473 Potsdam, Germany; Department of Earth Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Malteser Strasse 74-100, 12249 Berlin, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/ncomms2999

PMID

23778720

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.

Language: en