Motivation
The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) with its remarkable seismic pattern of westwards propagating Mw>7 earthquakes from 1939 to 1999, has been a major interest for many earth scientists. Particularly paleoseismologists opened several trenches along each rupture segment to document the seismic history and work out if such a sequence was the typical behavior of NAF. There have been nearly 50 paleo-seismic site studies in the last 15 years; however a few of them are published.
The 1939-1999 earthquake sequence has been widely used as an exclusive example for earthquake occurrence along strike-slip faults. The progressive rupture failure has been attributed as a characteristic behavior of the large transform fault. Up to date, paleoseismologists revealed almost the last 2000 years of NAF’s earthquake history. Revisions on historical seismological data provided new insights on the historical seismicity. Now, new outcomes display a much more complicated picture and arouse questions whether this sequence was ordinary or unique through the evolution of the NAF.
Earlier to the 1939-1999 earthquake sequence a large shock Mw 7.4 ruptured on 9 August 1912 the westernmost section of the NAF. The earthquake caused extensive destruction in the western Marmara region extending to the Balkans. Together with the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake rupture, the 1912 rupture extension plays now an important role in evaluating the seismic hazard in the Marmara region. There have been several recent efforts to document all these 20th century earthquake ruptures, through detailed field mapping and paleoseismic trenching.
In 2012, 100 years will have been passed since the occurrence of the 1912 Mürefte earthquake. Since then, new information and a better understanding of this event has been established. We consider that the 100th year commemoration of the Mürefte earthquake is a good opportunity to create a platform for all paleoseismologist to share and discuss new outcomes concerning their studies along strike-slip fault systems and the entire North Anatolian fault.
Objectives
The scope of the PANAF meeting is to bring together earth scientist who have interest on strike-slip fault systems, particular the North Anatolian Fault. The main target of the meeting may be summarized as given in these lines:
- Discuss the “state of the art” for paleoseismic studies along the NAF.
- Determine the present-day knowledge of earthquake periodicity along major strike-slip systems.
- Constrain the historical seismicity of the eastern Mediterranean, particularly NAF.
- Understand long-term and short-term kinematics and deformation rates of major strike-slip fault systems, particularly the NAF.
- Bring together all paleoseismic studies performed along the NAF.
- Determine the methods applied up-to-date for paleo-seismology along the NAF and other strike-slip fault systems.
- Discuss new methods, target regions and vision for future research along the NAF.
Future paleoseismic investigations along the NAF require a thorough understanding and knowledge of currently obtained results. Hereby, we aim establishing a new vision for future research in Turkey. We hope that this meeting will enhance the interaction between researchers (world-wide) who study active faults and paleoseismology and provide a basis to initiate new collaborations.
Therefore, we welcome oral and poster presentations from all researchers who are studying the recent tectonics of the North Anatolian Fault system and other major active strike-slip fault systems.
Themes:
The main themes of the meeting are as following:
TH01 - The 9 August 1912 Mürefte Earthquake.
TH02 - Historical seismicity and earthquake periodicity in the eastern Mediterranean; spatial and temporal seismic gaps and interseismic earthquake cycles.
TH03 - Fault segmentation and end-points of earthquake ruptures; examples from NAF and other faults.
TH04 - Paleoseismic trenching along the NAF and other major strike-slip faults; dating methods and resolution in earthquake timing.
TH05 - Sub-aqueous paleoseismology along the NAF and other major strike-slip faults; methods and applications.
TH06 - Long-term and short-term paleoseismic, geodetic and seismological rate of fault slip, along NAF and other strike slip fault systems: converging or diverging results.
TH07 - Geomorphology of active faults in control of climatic fluctuations.