Turkey's next quake: Research shows where, how bad -- but not 'when'
Awareness of seismic hazard could prepare the population and the science community

Date:
April 20, 2023
Source:
University of Southern California
Summary:
Using remote sensing, geophysicists have documented the massive
Feb. 6 quake that killed more than 50,000 people in Eastern Turkey
and toppled more than 100,000 buildings. Alarmingly, researchers
found that a section of the fault remains unbroken and locked --
a sign that the plates there may, when friction intensifies,
generate another magnitude 6.8 earthquake when it finally gives way.


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FULL STORY ========================================================================== Researchers know a lot about Turkey's next major earthquake. They can
pinpoint the probable epicenter, estimate its strength and see the
spatial footprint of where damage is most likely to occur.


==========================================================================
They just can't say when it will happen.

That's the main takeaway from a new USC-led study that appears today
(April 20) in Seismica.

Using remote sensing, USC geophysicist Sylvain Barbot and his fellow researchers documented the massive Feb. 6 quake that killed more than
50,000 people in Eastern Turkey and toppled more than 100,000 buildings.

Alarmingly, researchers found that a section of the fault remains unbroken
and locked -- a sign that the plates there may, when friction intensifies, generate another magnitude 6.8 earthquake when it finally gives way.

"We know a little bit better what to prepare for. We don't know the
timing, but we know where it can happen," Barbot said.

Major earthquakes are caused by the slipping of tectonic plates. The
plates, slowly moving pieces of the earth's crust, press against each
other, gradually accumulating force over the course of decades, centuries
and eons. When the plates finally slip, the energy explodes in traveling
waves through the earth's crust.

The Kahramanmaras, Turkey, magnitude 7.8 mainshock occurred Feb. 6,
followed by a magnitude 7.6 aftershock on a separate fault further
west. Another quake occurred two weeks later, a magnitude 6.4 on
Feb. 20. A plotting of data (see above) shows seismic activity and the
amount of slippage along the faults.

The area beneath Turkey's Pu"tu"rge district shows a swarm of seismic
activity along the fault -- but no slippage. That means that part of
the fault is locked, or stuck, but it is likely to slip sometime --
anytime -- in the future.

"What we've seen in photos of the buildings that collapsed is that some
of them were pancakes but others were literally pulverized," Barbot
said. "So that means another degree of failure; even the concrete itself disintegrated. There is the possibility that this earthquake produced
more shaking than was anticipated in the building codes. We won't know
without more research.

"So, we have this region where we can expect a 6.8 magnitude earthquake
and two things can happen from here. The population needs to be prepared
for that. But also the scientific community because that gives us an opportunity to prepare a monitoring experiment to see how an earthquake
starts and ends."
* RELATED_TOPICS
o Earth_&_Climate
# Earthquakes # Natural_Disasters # Tsunamis #
Geology # Earth_Science # Environmental_Science #
Near-Earth_Object_Impacts # Geochemistry
* RELATED_TERMS
o 1999_Izmit,_Turkey_Earthquake o North_Anatolian_Fault o
Earthquake o Shaanxi_Earthquake o 1923_Great_Kanto_earthquake o
Great_Chilean_Earthquake o Elastic-rebound_theory_of_earthquakes
o Richter_magnitude_scale

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided
by University_of_Southern_California. Original written by Leigh
Hopper. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Sylvain Barbot, Heng Luo, Teng Wang, Yariv Hamiel, Oksana
Piatibratova,
Muhammad Tahir Javed, Carla Braitenberg, Gokhan Gurbuz. Slip
distribution of the February 6, 2023 Mw 7.8 and Mw 7.6,
Kahramanmaraş, Turkey earthquake sequence in the East Anatolian
Fault Zone. Seismica, 2023; 2 (3) DOI: 10.26443/seismica.v2i3.502 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230420135304.htm

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