A Late Holocene Slip Rate Of The North Anatolian Fault, Hersek Peninsula, Izmit Bay, Turkey
Abstract
The Hersek Peninsula has been a strategic site for at least the last two millennia as a result of its location. It extends into Izmit Bay and creates a shortcut for the historical Bagdad Road, an important section of the spice route, between Istanbul (Constantinople) and Iznik (Nicaea). It also controls the entrance of Izmit Bay to Izmit (Nicomedia). Civilizations have been investing in this location by building harbors, fortifications, baths, roads, bridges, aqueducts, and temples. The remnants of these historical structures record evidence for past destruction of both anthropogenic and tectonic origin. From an active tectonics point of view, the Hersek Peninsula is a key locality for understanding seismic hazard in the Marmara Region. It is the last place that the North Anatolian fault can be studied on land before it enters the Marmara Sea and it has experienced strong ground shaking most recently during the M7.4 Izmit earthquake in 1999. Paleoseismic trenching as well as archeoseismologic investigations were recently performed on the Hersek Peninsula for regional and site specific seismic hazard characterization. Our paleoseismic trenches north of the Hersek Lagoon provided fault exposures confirming the location of the North Anatolian fault on the peninsula. Detailed mapping of a 6th century A.D. Byzantine aqueduct offset 14 ± 1 meters along the projection of this fault trace revealed a minimum late Holocene slip rate of 13.6 +1/-3.5 mm yr-1. Rapid fan deposition and subsidence on the delta plain across the Hersek Peninsula has resulted in the relatively recent deposition of several meters of relatively young alluvium and nearshore tidal deposits. Nearly 2 km of trench exposures revealed these deposits were continuous and contain only minor evidence of ground shaking in the form of secondary liquefaction deposits and ground fractures. The lack of primary ground surface rupture evidence in these approximately 300-year-old sediments strongly suggests that the historical 1509 earthquake is likely the most recent ground rupturing earthquake on the Hersek Peninsula. This late Holocene slip rate estimate and information about the most recent earthquake at Hersek Peninsula provides invaluable information for the seismic hazard and risk analyses of the Marmara region.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFM.T33B2236K
- Keywords:
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- 7221 SEISMOLOGY / Paleoseismology;
- 8111 TECTONOPHYSICS / Continental tectonics: strike-slip and transform