Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard of Splay and Normal Faults in the Western Makran/Iran

Authors

Amin Rashidi
Key Laboratory of Coastal Environmental Processes and Ecological Remediation, Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yantai
Denys Dutykh
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, LAMA, 73000 Chambéry, France
Zaher Hossein Shomali
Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Nasser Keshavarz Farajkhah
Research Institute of Petroleum Industry, Tehran, Iran

Synopsis

The Makran subduction zone (MSZ), with 1000-km in length, is located offshore of southern Iran and Pakistan. The oceanic crust of the Arabian plate has been subducted beneath the Eurasian plate along the MSZ since the Early Cretaceous. The MSZ is a typical two-dimensional (2D) and one of the most extensive subduction zones with a very wide accretionary prism (~ 400 km) and a very thick sediment section of up to 7 km. It is seismically segmented into a western and an eastern part. The eastern Makran hosted two instrumentally recorded tsunamis in 1945 and 2013 and few historical tsunamis. However, only one possible tsunami from a local earthquake in 1008 is reported for the western Makran. Although the western Makranis very seismically quiet compared to the eastern Makran, the lack of major seismicity and other kinds of evidence (e.g. GPS measurements and theterraced topography of western Makran) can be results of the locking state of the western Markan. Assuming its locking, it can be assumed to have a potential of producing future great tsunamigenic earthquakes. Compared to the eastern Makran, the western Makran region has received less attention as a potential tsunamigenic zone.

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Published
April 12, 2020