the 1971 may 12 burdur earthquake sequence sw turkey a synthesis of seismological and geological observations summary it is now widely accepted that the rapid extension observed in western turkey is mainly accommodated by large active normal faults which control the geomorphology the ne sw trending burdur acigol and baklan basins bounded by large faults form a system of half graben whose orientation is evident in both the topography and the tilting of neogene sediments adjacent to them we used long period p and sh waveforms to determine the source parameters of the two largest earthquakes of the 1971 may 12 sequence that occurred in the burdur region the main shock was followed by many aftershocks which were distributed in a broad zone elongated ne sw parallel to the long axes of the basins in the region documented surface breaks of the 1971 event suggest that the northwest dipping faults along the southern margin of the burdur basin are those which moved well exposed fault planes are found dominantly to the south of burdur lake the surface dips of these faults are greater than that of the nw dipping nodal plane obtained for the main shock combined seismological and geological observations suggest that these faults have listric geometries

global positioning system measurements of present day crustal movements in the arabia africa eurasia plate collision zone we present and interpret global positioning system gps measurements of crustal motions for the period 1988 1994 at 54 sites extending east west from the caucasus mountains of southern russia georgia and armenia to the aegean coast of turkey and north south from the southern edge of the eurasian plate pontus block to the northern edge of the arabian platform viewed from a eurasia fixed reference frame sites on the northern arabian platform move n38 13 w at 20 3 mm yr roughly consistent with the velocity implied by nuvel 1a circuit closure n23 7 w at 24 2 mm yr the motion of arabia appears to be transferred directly to the region of turkey north of the suture however eastern turkey is characterized by distributed deformation while central western turkey is characterized by coherent plate motion involving westward displacement and counterclockwise rotation of the anatolian plate internal deformation within the central part of the anatolian plate is less than 2 mm yr the anatolian plate is decoupled from eurasia along the right lateral strike slip north anatolian fault naf this different response in eastern and western turkey to the collision of arabia may result from the different boundary conditions the hellenic arc forming a free boundary to the west and the asian continent and oceanic lithosphere of the black and caspian seas forming a resistant boundary to the north and east we derive a best fitting euler vector for anatolia eurasia motion of 29 2 0 8 n 32 9 0 4 1 3 0 1 m y the mapped surface trace of the naf corresponds well to a small circle about this pole the new euler vector implies an upper bound for naf slip rate of 30 2 mm yr i e assuming all relative motion is accommodated along the naf using the nuvel 1a euler vector for arabia eurasia and the gps euler vector for anatolia eurasia we determine an arabia anatolia euler vector of 31 2 n 45 2 e 0 9 0 1 m y and an upper bound on the east anatolian fault slip rate of 15 3 mm yr the aegean trough region of western turkey deviates significantly from coherent plate rotation in addition to rotating with anatolia this region shows roughly n s extension at a rate of 14 5 mm yr taken together with satellite laser ranging results along the hellenic arc the contemporary pattern of deformation indicates increasing motions toward the arc suggesting that the westward displacement and counterclockwise rotation of anatolia is driven both by pushing from the arabian plate and by pulling or basal drag associated with the foundering african plate along the hellenic subduction zone

geometry and mechanism of faulting of the 1980 el asnam algeria earthquake from inversion of teleseismic body waves and comparison with field observations the el asnam earthquake of october 10 1980 ms 7 3 provided a wealth of geological and seismological data and is an ideal event for comparing geologically and seismologically derived models the event produced extensive surface faulting in addition to the main tectonic deformation which is clearly a thrust widespread secondary normal faulting was observed at the surface in the southwest region the surface break of a thrust fault could be traced for 24 km in the northeast part of the fault zone normal faults with throws of several meters were observed although no clear thrust type surface breaks were observed in this region geodetic measurements and aftershocks indicate that thrusting was nonetheless the main tectonic mode of deformation in this paper the rupture process of the el asnam earthquake is investigated by inversion of teleseismic p and sh waves the effort is concentrated on the late part of the waveforms which carries information about the faulting in the least understood north eastern segment of the fault zone during the earthquake rupture initiated at the southern terminus of the southwestern fault segment and propagated northward as indicated by the epicentral location and the observable azimuthal directivity of the body wave shapes and amplitudes the seismogenic faulting in the southwestern segment has a thrust mechanism with the following average parameters seismic moment 3 9 1019 n m depth 6 km strike 220 dip 46 and rake 72 the duration of rupture on this fault segment was approximately 10 s which together with the observed fault length of 24 km indicates a rupture velocity of 2 4 km s unconstrained inversions suggest normal faulting in the northeast part of the source region that began immediately following the arrival of the rupture to the northeast region the normal faulting mechanism is in agreement with that observed for the large surface fault scarps in this region guided by the evidence from aftershocks and geodetic measurements a solution with a thrust type mechanism was also sought using a priori constraints based on the field observations the observed strike and slip angle we obtain the following thrust source mechanism for the northeast segment seismic moment 3 6 1019 n m depth 6 km strike 230 dip 20 and rake 91 this solution requires that the thrusting in the northeast be initiated 10 s after the arrival of the rupture from the southwest suggesting that some time is required to overcome the geometric barrier marked by the abrupt change in the dip and azimuth inversions are nonunique with respect to the seismic moment associated with normal faulting the ambiguity being caused by the limited bandwidth of the observed body waves the moment estimated from the surface waves at periods about 300 s however favors thrust faulting to be dominant in the northeast region

earthquakes gravity and the origin of the bali basin an example of a nascent continental fold and thrust belt we infer from the bathymetry and gravity field and from the source mechanisms and depths of the eight largest earthquakes in the bali region that the bali basin is a downwarp in the crust of the sunda shelf produced and maintained by thrusting along the flores back arc thrust zone earthquake source mechanisms and focal depths are inferred from the inversion of long period p and sh waves for all events and short period p waves for two of the events centroidal depths that give the best fit to the seismograms range from 10 to 18 km but uncertainties in depth allow a range from 7 to 24 km the p wave nodal planes that dip south at 13 to 35 7 strike roughly parallel to the volcanic arc and are consistent with thrusting of crust of the bali basin beneath it the positions of the earthquakes with respect to crustal features inferred from seismic and gravity data suggest that the earthquakes occur in the basement along the western end of the flores thrust zone the slip direction for the back arc thrust zone inferred from the orientation of the earthquake slip vectors indicates that the thrusting in the bali basin is probably part of the overall plate convergence as it roughly coincides with the convergence direction between the sunda arc and the indian ocean plate summation of seismic moments of earthquakes between 1960 and 1985 suggests a minimum rate of convergence across the thrust zone of 4 2 mm a the presence of back arc thrusting suggests that some coupling between the indian ocean plate and the sunda arc occurs but mechanisms such as continental collision or a shallow subduction of the indian ocean plate probably can be ruled out the present tectonic setting and structure of the bali basin is comparable to the early forelands of the andes or western north america in that a fold and thrust belt is forming on the continental side of an arc trench system at which oceanic lithosphere is being subducted the bali basin is flanked by the tertiary java basin to the west and the oceanic flores basin to the east and thus provides an actualistic setting for the development of a fold and thrust belt in which structure and timing of deformation can change significantly along strike on the scale a few hundred kilometers

peak ground velocity shakemaps derived from geodetic slip models summary we develop a methodology to derive fast and reliable peak ground velocity pgv shakemaps from kinematic finite source models of earthquake rupture inferred from geodetic static displacements the temporal variations in slip on the fault are based on the simple assumption that larger slip takes longer time to accumulate assuming constant rupture and slip velocities slip is distributed in time to produce a variable rise time model sensitivity tests on finite source models of the 1994 mw 6 7 northridge california earthquake show that distribution of peak ground velocities derived using 3 0 km s 1 rupture velocity and 76 8 cm s 1 slip velocity matches to a large extent observed pgv suggesting that rapid assessment of strong ground motions derived from geodetic data can aid emergency response particularly in areas with sparse seismic station coverage

active tectonics of the north and central aegean sea summary in this paper we examine the connection between the westward motion of turkey relative to europe and the extension in and around the aegean sea the principal new data available since the last attempt to synthesize the tectonics of this region by mckenzie 1978 are much improved focal mechanisms of earthquakes constrained by p and sh body wave modelling as well as by first motions these mechanisms show that the faulting in the western part of the aegean region is mostly extensional in nature on normal faults with a nw to wnw strike and with slip vectors directed nnw to nne there is evidence from palaeomagnetism that this western region rotates clockwise relative to stable europe in the central and eastern aegean and in nw turkey distributed right lateral strike slip is more prevalent on faults trending ne to ene and with slip vectors directed ne palaeomagnetic data in this eastern region is more ambiguous but consistent with very small or no rotations in the northern part and possibly anticlockwise rotations relative to europe in the south the strike slip faulting that enters the central aegean from the east appears to end abruptly in the sw against the nw trending normal faults of greece the kinematics of the deformation is controlled by three factors the westward motion of turkey relative to europe the continental collision between nw greece albania and the apulia adriatic platform in the west and the presence of the hellenic subduction zone to the south as the right lateral slip on the north anatolian fault enters the aegean region it splays out becoming distributed on several parallel faults the continental shortening in nw greece and albania does not allow the rotation of the western margin of the region to be rapid enough to accommodate this distributed e w right lateral shear and thus leads to e w shortening in the northern aegean which is compensated by n s extension as the southern aegean margin can move easily over the hellenic subduction zone the dynamics of the system once initiated is self sustaining being driven by the high topography in eastern turkey and by the roll back of the subducted slab beneath the southern aegean the geometry of the deformation resembles the behaviour of a system of broken slats attached to margins that rotate in spite of its extreme simplicity a simple model of such broken slats is able to reproduce quantitatively most of the features of the instantaneous velocity field in the aegean region including the slip vectors and nature of the faulting in the eastern and western parts the senses and approximate rates of rotation the overall extensional velocity across the aegean and the distribution of strain rates as seen in the seismicity and topography or bathymetry and using geodetic measurements as part of this study we re examined the relation between the surface faulting and the focal parameters determined seismologically for the three large 1981 gulf of corinth earthquakes and reassessed the evidence for associating particular earthquakes in the sequence with observed surface faulting an important result is that in one of the events there is a resolvable discrepancy between the slip vector measured at the surface and that determined from the seismic body waves

satellite radar interferometric map of the coseismic deformation field of the m 6 1 eureka valley california earthquake of may 17 1993 interferometric combination of pairs of synthetic aperture radar sar images acquired by the ers 1 satellite before and after the eureka valley california earthquake of may 17 1993 maps the coseismic deformation field the fringes corresponding to contours of equal change in satellite to ground distance can be enhanced by forming the sum of two of such interferograms with altitudes of ambiguity roughly equal in magnitude but opposite in sign the resulting composite interferogram reveals some 10 cm of change in range indicating a coseismic deepening of the eureka valley graben after unwrapping filtering and decimation the range changes are used to estimate the centroid and focal mechanism these estimates indicate normal faulting on a rupture patch compatible with the distribution of aftershocks and mapped quaternary faults the change in elevation produced by this earthquake resembles the current topography scaled by a factor of 20 000

stratigraphy and palaeoclimatic significance of late quaternary loess palaeosol sequences of the last interglacial glacial cycle in central alaska abstract loess is one of the most widespread subaerial deposits in alaska and adjacent yukon territory and may have a history that goes back 3 ma based on mineralogy and major and trace element chemistry central alaskan loess has a composition that is distinctive from other loess bodies of the world although it is quartz dominated central alaskan loess was probably derived from a variety of rock types including granites metabasalts and schists detailed stratigraphic data and pedologic criteria indicate that contrary to early studies many palaeosols are present in central alaskan loess sections the buried soils indicate that loess sedimentation was episodic or at least rates of deposition decreased to the point where pedogenesis could keep ahead of aeolian input as in china loess deposition and pedogenesis are likely competing processes and neither stops completely during either phase of the loess soil formation cycle loess deposition in central alaska took place before and probably during the last interglacial period during stadials of the mid wisconsin period during the last glacial period and during the holocene an unexpected result of our geochronological studies is that only moderate loess deposition took place during the last glacial period our studies lead us to conclude that vegetation plays a key role in loess accumulation in alaska factors favouring loess production are enhanced during glacial periods but factors that favour loess accumulation are diminished during glacial periods the most important of these is vegetation boreal forest serves as an effective loess trap but sparsely distributed herb tundra does not thus thick accumulations of loess should not be expected where tundra vegetation was dominant and this is borne out by modern studies near the treeline in central alaska much of the stratigraphic diversity of north american loess including that found in the central lowlands the great plains and alaska is explained by a new model that emphasizes the relative importance of loess production factors versus loess accumulation factors

the displacement field of the landers earthquake mapped by radar interferometry geodetic data obtained by ground or space based techniques can be used to infer the distribution of slip on a fault that has ruptured in an earthquake although most geodetic techniques require a surveyed network to be in place before the earthquake1 3 satellite images when collected at regular intervals can capture co seismic displacements without advance knowledge of the earthquake s location synthetic aperture radar sar interferometry first introduced4 in 1974 for topographic mapping5 8 can also be used to detect changes in the ground surface by removing the signal from the topography9 10 here we use sar interferometry to capture the movements produced by the 1992 earthquake in landers california11 we construct an interferogram by combining topographic information with sar images obtained by the ers 1 satellite before and after the earthquake the observed changes in range from the ground surface to the satellite agree well with the slip measured in the field with the displacements measured by surveying and with the results of an elastic dislocation model as a geodetic tool the sar interferogram provides a denser spatial sampling 100 m per pixel than surveying methods1 3 and a better precision 3 cm than previous space imaging techniques12 13

faulting process of the august 8 1993 guam earthquake a thrust event in an otherwise weakly coupled subduction zone we study a large mw 7 7 earthquake that occurred on june 8 1993 slightly offshore and under the island of guam in the southern mariana island arc from a complete study of p and sh body waves a relocation of the aftershocks and the subevents of the main shock we propose a relatively simple model of the rupture process of this event we propose that this earthquake ruptured a shallow dipping thrust fault that corresponds to the subduction interface under guam like many other earthquakes this event started with a small foreshock and was followed by two large energy release events located to the northeast of the epicenter along the subduction zone the rupture process had a relatively short duration of about 32 s with a weak starting phase that lasted about 8 s seismic moments estimated from body waves surface waves and global positioning system gps are very similar of the order of 4 5 1020 n m the displacement field produced by our best model was compared to the gps measurements of coseismic slip obtained by beavan et al 1994 we find an excellent agreement both in displacement direction and magnitude between the predicted and observed gps displacements this appears to be then the largest earthquake to have occurred on a shallow dipping thrust fault in the mariana subduction zone during this century its occurrence requires a reassessment of the concept of seismic coupling in this subduction zone

gps observations of fault afterslip and upper crustal deformation following the northridge earthquake global positioning system gps observations indicate that significant aseismic deformation occurred in the year following the january 17 1994 northridge earthquake the postseismic observations show the same sense of motion as the coseismic compared with the coseismic displacements the far field postseismic motions 1 2 fault dimensions away are proportionally larger than those seen in the near field the postseismic data are best modeled with two faults one on the rupture plane and one located in the shallow crust the upper crustal fault may represent an actual fault or may be indicative of viscous relaxation occurring in the upper crust the inferred afterslip and or relaxation moment is approximately 2 9 1018 n m or 22 of the mainshock moment release we expect that the moment release due to the afterslip and relaxation effectively reduce the earthquake hazard locally it is not clear from this study how the postseismic deformation loads the surrounding faults or alters the state of stress on those faults

global positioning system measurements of deformations associated with the 1987 superstition hills earthquake evidence for conjugate faulting large station displacements observed from imperial valley global positioning system gps campaigns are attributed to the november 24 1987 superstition hills earthquake sequence thirty sites from a 42 station gps network established in 1986 have been reoccupied during 1988 and or 1990 displacements at three sites within 3 km of the surface rupture approach 0 5 m eight additional stations within 20 km of the seismic zone are displaced at least 10 cm this is the first occurrence of a large earthquake ms 6 6 within a preexisting gps network best fitting uniform slip models of rectangular dislocations in an elastic half space indicate 130 8 cm right lateral displacement along the northwest trending superstition hills fault and 30 10 cm left lateral displacement along the conjugate northeast trending elmore ranch fault the geodetic moments are 9 4 1025 dyn cm and 2 3 1025 dyn cm for the superstition hills and elmore ranch faults respectively consistent with teleseismic source parameters the data also suggest that postseismic slip along the superstition hills fault is concentrated at shallow depths distributed slip solutions using singular value decomposition indicate near uniform displacement along the elmore ranch fault and concentrated slip to the northwest and southeast along the superstition hills fault a significant component of nonseismic secular displacement is observed across the imperial valley which is attributed to interseismic plate boundary deformation

radar interferometry and its application to changes in the earth s surface geophysical applications of radar interferometry to measure changes in the earth s surface have exploded in the early 1990s this new geodetic technique calculates the interference pattern caused by the difference in phase between two images acquired by a spaceborne synthetic aperture radar at two distinct times the resulting interferogram is a contour map of the change in distance between the ground and the radar instrument these maps provide an unsurpassed spatial sampling density 100 pixels km 2 a competitive precision 1 cm and a useful observation cadence 1 pass month 1 they record movements in the crust perturbations in the atmosphere dielectric modifications in the soil and relief in the topography they are also sensitive to technical effects such as relative variations in the radar s trajectory or variations in its frequency standard we describe how all these phenomena contribute to an interferogram then a practical summary explains the techniques for calculating and manipulating interferograms from various radar instruments including the four satellites currently in orbit ers 1 ers 2 jers 1 and radarsat the next chapter suggests some guidelines for interpreting an interferogram as a geophysical measurement respecting the limits of the technique assessing its uncertainty recognizing artifacts and discriminating different types of signal we then review the geophysical applications published to date most of which study deformation related to earthquakes volcanoes and glaciers using ers 1 data we also show examples of monitoring natural hazards and environmental alterations related to landslides subsidence and agriculture in addition we consider subtler geophysical signals such as postseismic relaxation tidal loading of coastal areas and interseismic strain accumulation we conclude with our perspectives on the future of radar interferometry the objective of the review is for the reader to develop the physical understanding necessary to calculate an interferogram and the geophysical intuition necessary to interpret it

geodetic investigation of the 13 may 1995 kozani grevena greece earthquake the ms 6 6 13 may 1995 kozani grevena earthquake struck a region of low historical seismic activity which includes a 10 year old triangulation network in northern greece after the earthquake monuments from this network were occupied with gps to measure co seismic displacements inversion of the co seismic displacement field to yield a source mechanism is achieved by use of a hybrid simplex monte carlo method which requires no a priori constraints the model focal mechanism agrees well with the global cmt solution and locally observed aftershocks but implies a significantly higher scalar moment than do seismological or sar interferometry studies and has a longer fault length than the model based on sar interferometry

the 1994 sefidabeh eastern iran earthquakes revisited new evidence from satellite radar interferometry and carbonate dating about the growth of an active fold above a blind thrust fault in 1994 three shallow earthquakes of mw 6 occurred close together on blind thrusts near sefidabeh in eastern iran in an earlier study of the teleseismic waveforms the geomorphology and the faulting in the epicentral region it was suggested that these earthquakes were associated with the growth of a ridge above a blind thrust fault system whose activity could be detected by its effect on the surface drainage in this study we present a sar interferogram that precisely determines the location and amount of coseismic surface displacements showing that the earthquakes in the sefidabeh sequence probably occurred on en echelon fault segments associated with three stepping ridges we also present u th dates of 100 ka for lake deposits uplifted by the growing ridge from the cumulative dated uplift and knowledge of the surface displacements due to an earthquake sequence we estimate that 120 such events have occurred in the past 100 ka with an average recurrence interval of 830 yr and an average convergence rate of 1 5 mm yr 1 on the sefidabeh thrust each estimate has an uncertainty of a factor of two either way we argue that the sefidabeh fault originally formed by coalescence of many small fault segments and has grown in length at about 2 cm yr 1 in the past 100 ka though the coseismic surface deformation observed in the sar interferogram closely resembles folding the overall topography does not because of inherited topography associated with earlier geological deformation in spite of this the activity of the buried thrust fault can easily be detected by its effect on the surface drainage a significant lesson when interpreting landscapes that are not entirely due to the present day deformation

the 1995 grevena northern greece earthquake fault model constrained with tectonic observations and sar interferometry after the 1995 grevena ms 6 6 event in northern greece we mapped the earthquake fault break in detail the surface break is small 8 12 km long 4 cm slip compared to the moment release of the event however the morphologic and tectonic study of the active faults in the field and using the spot satellite imagery suggests that the earthquake ruptured part of a much larger fault system including interconnecting segments we used sar interferometry of the satellite ers 1 imagery to characterize the coseismic displacement field this shows a kidney shaped zone of subsidence reaching 30 cm flanked by an uplift zone reaching 5 cm we reproduce this field using dislocations in an elastic half space and our observations of the fault system this requires 1 m slip from 4 to 15 km depth on a main normal fault segment dipping nnw our preliminary model includes significant ne dipping scissors faulting at the eastern end of the rupture clearly seen in the interferograms

accuracy of topographic maps derived from ers 1 interferometric radar an interferometric radar technique for topographic mapping of surfaces promises a high resolution approach to the generation of digital elevation models the authors present analyses of data collected by the synthetic aperture radar instrument on board the ers 1 satellite on successive orbits use of a single satellite in a nearly repeating orbit is attractive for reducing cost and spaceborne hardware complexity also it permits inference of changes in the surface from the correlation properties of the radar echoes the data have been reduced to correlation maps and digital elevation models the correlation maps show that temporal correlation decreases significantly with time but not necessarily at a constant well defined rate likely depending on environmental factors when correlation among passes remains high however it is possible to form digital elevation models analyses of noise expected in ers 1 interferometric data collected over alaska and the southwestern united states indicate that maps with relative errors less than 5 m rms are possible in some regions however orbit uncertainties imply that tie points are required in order to reduce absolute height errors to a similar magnitude the authors find that about 6 tie points per 40 spl times 40 km scene with 5 m rms or better height accuracy are needed to keep systematic map height errors below 5 m rms the performance of the ers 1 radar system for topographic applications though useful for a variety of regional and local discipline studies may be improved with respect to temporal decorrelation errors and absolute height acuity by modifying the orbit repeat period and incorporating precise orbit determination techniques the resulting implementation will meet many but not all objectives of a global mapping mission

a reappraisal of large earthquake scaling abstract twelve years ago i pointed out that observations indicate that the slip in large earthquakes scales with their length rather than their width as expected from the canonical model romanowicz 1992 has recently argued that more recent data show that the opposite is true which has obliged me to re examine the question i point out here a defining flaw in her analysis in that she allowed mo the moment at the cross over from small to large earthquakes to be a free variable in her curve fitting whereas this parameter can be defined independently when this parameter is independently fixed i find that the up dated data set confirms my earlier conclusion that for large crustal earthquakes m0 scales with l 2 a little over a decade ago i pointed out that obser vations indicate that the slip in large earthquakes scales with their rupture length scholz 1982 several sub sequent papers provided additional data supportive of this view chen and molnar 1983 shimazaki 1986 scholz et al 1986 large earthquakes are defined in this con text as those that rupture the entire seismogenic thick ness w0 and are thus constrained to propagate farther in a horizontal direction only for crustal earthquakes w0 is nearly constant 15 km so this scaling conflicts with conventional models of earthquakes such as dislocation models because they predict that slip scales with width which is invariant for these earthquakes i offered two alternative ways to interpret these observations one is that such conventional w models are correct but that stress drop could no longer be regarded as scale invariant but must scale with fault length as an alternative i sug gested the possibility of what i termed an l model in which slip intrinsically scales with fault length this created a minor crisis in seismology which has yet to be resolved it is no exaggeration to say that my l model suggestion has not attracted a noticeable coterie of admirers nor has my other suggestion and there has been no other model proposed in the interim that ex plains the observed l scaling although heaton 1990 has suggested a way in which length may scale with stress drop a variation of my w model scaling alternative in the face of this an alternative is to question the obser vations which is what romanowicz 1992 has recently chosen to do in her interpretation of an updated data set she concluded that seismic moment m0 scales lin early with rupture length l for large earthquakes which is consistent with w models and implies that slip u is scale invariant for large crustal earthquakes this great discrepancy with the earlier result she implies is due to the presence of superior modern measurements in the updated data set this issue has major implications both practical and theoretical and merits some debate here i present my own reappraisal of the data in which the conclusions are very different reappraisal of the data romanowicz s conclusions were based on a log log plot of m0 versus l for a data set of strike slip earth quakes she showed that the data in this figure could be better fit by two straight lines one with slope 3 in the lower scale range and one with slope 1 in the upper scale range than with a single line of slope 2 for small earth quakes which grow in both dimensions with l w m0 should scale with l 3 for large earthquakes where w has saturated at w0 and growth only occurs in the l di rection m0 should scale with l according to conven tional models hence the problem produced by my ob servation that m0 scales with l 2 for those events superficially then it appears that she has resolved the issue the problem however is that she has allowed the cross over length l which separates small from large earthquakes to be a free variable in her curve fitting ex ercise she thus obtains a cross over moment of 0 6 to 0 8 x 1020 n m which is appropriate for a rupture length of 60 to 70 km by adding an additional free parameter to the curve fitting one would expect a much better fit to be achieved the question is whether such a step is justified if small earthquakes grow with l w then the transition to large earthquakes defined as an event that ruptures the entire seismogenic thickness would be l w0 10 to 20 km for the data being studied this may be checked observationally because large earth quakes almost invariably nucleate near the base of the seismogenic layer das and scholz 1983 it follows that the transition to large earthquakes is at the length at which one begins to consistently see surface ruptures inspec tion of the earthquakes in romanowicz s 1992 figure 215

atmospheric limitations to repeat track radar interferometry in its recent radar imaging mission the shuttle imaging radar satellite sir c devoted three days to repeat track interferometry we have analyzed the data from a test site in the mojave desert of california although good topography 10 m on 21 m postings was obtained most of the error was caused by turbulent water vapor in the lower atmosphere spatial structure of 6 km and all smaller sizes was observed the rms one way time delay was found to be 0 24 cm essentially identical results were obtained at two wavelengths 24 and 5 7 cm

the co seismic slip distribution of the landers earthquake we derived a model for the co seismic slip distribution on the faults which ruptured during the landers earthquake sequence of 28 june 1992 the model is based on the inversion of surface geodetic measurements primarily vector displacements measured using the global positioning system gps the inversion procedure assumes that the slip distribution is to some extent smooth and purely right lateral strike slip for a given fault geometry a family of so lutions of varying smoothness can be generated we choose the optimal model from this family based on cross validation which measures the predictive power of the data and the trade off of misfit and roughness solutions which give roughly equal weight to misfit and smoothness are preferred and have certain features in common 1 there are two main patches of slip on the johnson valley fault and on the homestead valley emerson and camp rock faults 2 virtually all slip is in the upper 10 to 12 km and 3 the model reproduces the general features of the geologically measured sur face displacements without prior constraints on the surface slip in all models regardless of smoothing very little slip is required on the fault that represents the big bear event and the total moment of the landers event is 9 1019 n m the nearly simultaneous rupture of multiple distinct faults suggests that much of the crust in this region must have been close to failure prior to the earthquake

analysis of the relationship between seismic moment and fault length for large crustal strike slip earthquakes between 1977 92 we have used an uniform data set to determine the scaling relation between seismic moment m0 and fault length for 34 large crustal strike slip earthquakes in the period 1977 92 the seismic moments used were obtained by the centroid moment tensor analysis the aftershocks of each event were relocated in this study and the fault length estimated from their spatial extent for large events we find that in spite of some scatter in the data the trend of this uni form data set indicates that m0 c 2 our data set does not show any obvious change of slope around m0 6 8 x 102o n m as was seen in a previous non uniform data set in

discrimination of geophysical phenomena in satellite radar interferograms various geophysical phenomena are recorded in the interference patterns formed by differencing two synthetic aperture radar sar images the fringes generated by the topographic relief can be removed using a digital elevation model dem the remaining fringes map the change in satellite to ground range which occurred between the acquisition times of the two images by comparing different pairs of images spanning different intervals of time it is possible to discriminate between geophysical signal and interferometric artifact here we apply this pair wise logic to the area around the 1992 landers california earthquake using sar images acquired by the ers 1 satellite the range varies with time as a constant step impulsive or sloping function examples of each type include a dem error an aftershock two atmospheric perturbations and postseismic afterslip respectively their signatures are identified and separated using the pair wise logic

a comparison between short term co seismic and long term one year slip for the landers earthquake measurements from strong motion and sar interferometry the long term relative displacements in the region of the landers earthquake were measured over a time interval of about one year using sar interferometry we have also evaluated the co seismic slip distribution through a strong motion inversion cotton and campillo 1995 and these results are used to compute the static displacement field associated with the co seismic slip we show that the synthetic static and the interferometry measurements are in very good agreement to give an evaluation of the magnitude of the pre and post seismic slip a residual interferogram between data and synthetic co seismic slip has been computed a simple analysis of the residual displacements gives a limiting value of the amplitude of pre and post seismic slip integrated over a period of one year and suggests that it is on the order of a few decimeters

surface displacement of the 17 may 1993 eureka valley california earthquake observed by sar interferometry satellite synthetic aperture radar sar interferometry shows that the magnitude 6 1 eureka valley earthquake of 17 may 1993 produced an elongated subsidence basin oriented north northwest parallel to the trend defined by the aftershock distribution whereas the source mechanism of the earthquake implies a north northeast striking normal fault the 3 millimeter accuracy of the radar observed displacement map over short spatial scales allowed identification of the main surface rupture associated with the event these observations suggest that the rupture began at depth and propagated diagonally upward and southward on a west dipping north northeast fault plane reactivating the largest escarpment in the saline range

joint estimation of afterslip rate and postseismic relaxation following the 1989 loma prieta earthquake global positioning system gps data from campaigns carried out over the 5 years following the 1989 loma prieta earthquake and leveling data measured in 1990 and 1992 define the postseismic velocity field around the loma prieta rupture zone subtraction of a background velocity field yields a residual velocity pattern which we interpret as the product of two physical processes 1 slow afterslip along distinct planes in the upper cru st and 2 viscoelastic relaxation of the lower crust and upper mantle biirgmann et al 1997 previously derived an afterslip model involving uniform afterslip on two optimally determined planes in cluding oblique reverse slip on the coseismic rupture and reverse slip on a shallow thrust fault to the northeast of the san andreas fault we further consider models of distributed slip on these two fault planes plus a viscoelastic relaxation pattern which depends on a suitable cose ismic rupture model and crust and mantle viscosities several fault models from the literature were considered for the 1989 coseismic rupture with nearly identical impact on the results simultaneous maximum likelihood inversion of the gps and leveling data for afterslip distri bution and viscosity yields the following results 1 a good fit to the data is obtained by smooth afterslip distributions without any viscoelastic relaxation being required 2 tangible broad scale viscoelastic relaxation of the lower crust and upper mantle are present in this data set at 97 confidence and a lower crustal viscosity of 1029 pa s is obtained however the viscosity of both the lower crust and upper mantle are poorly constrained 3 for a given misfit 20 less integrated afterslip and smoother afterslip distributions result when viscoelas tic relaxation is included 4 maximum slip rates on the slip distributed models are 3 5 crn yr the dominant patches estimated on the two planes fill in the entire depth range 4 13 km without significant overlap and deeper afterslip is not required the afterslip distribution on the coseismic rupture plane is strongly dominated by reverse slip immediately southeast of the main center of coseismic reverse slip

source inversion of the october 1 1995 dinar earthquake ms 6 1 a rupture model with implications for seismotectonics in sw turkey abstract an earthquake of ms 6 1 devastated the town of dinar sw turkey population 35 000 on october 1 1995 killing 90 people and destroying 30 of the town the earthquake generated complex body waveforms varying with azimuth at teleseismic distances the method of complex body waveform inversion developed by kikuchi and kanamori 1991 was used to infer a source process for the earthquake two subevents were necessary to explain the observed seismic records the inversion result suggests that the dinar earthquake initiated at the se end of the dinar fault with a subevent of seismic moment mo 0 5 1018 n m six seconds later the second subevent took place about 10 km to the northwest of the first subevent with a seismic moment a few times larger than the first the cmt depths of the first and second subevents were found to be 10 and 15 km respectively both subevents had a predominantly normal faulting mechanism with slip vectors oriented ne sw showing good agreement with the velocity vectors obtained from the recent slr and gps studies as well as with the regional stress orientation obtained from geological data the main shock was preceded by foreshock activity concentrated at the se end of the dinar fault where the first subevent took place while the aftershock activity was concentrated in the vicinity of the second subevent the spatial distribution of the foreshock and the aftershock activities and the locations of the subevents suggest that the first subevent broke an asperity and the second subevent broke a barrier on the fault following the definition by aki 1984 of an asperity and barrier earthquake model about 10 km of surface ruptures were associated with the earthquake while the estimates yield a rupture length of 25 km the calculated source parameters of the subevents and their locations suggest that the surface ruptures were probably associated with the first subevent the estimates also show that the rupture zones of the two subevents overlapped where the maximum vertical displacement was observed

tropospheric corrections of sar interferograms with strong topography application to etna the accuracy of spaceborne geodetic techniques including sar interferometry is limited by the time and spatial variation and altitude dependance of the propagation delay of electomagnetic waves in the lower troposphere particularly in mountainous areas in this paper we use a 1d model developed for tropospheric corrections of gps and doris measurements to correct sar data the differential tropospheric delay is computed at each pixel of the interferogram from ground temperature humidity and pressure using two empirical parameters calibrated from several radio soundings acquired in various latitude and climate conditions it is shown that with such a model given the 3300 meters topography of etna tropospheric variations can generate up to 4 phase rotations between the top and the bottom of the volcano in 16 out of the 20 interferograms processed with images acquired between august 1992 and october 1993 correction of the tropospheric effect reduces the number of fringes associated with the 1991 93 eruption from previous estimates the remaining deformation is consistant with a deforming source located at a depth of 14 1 km during the second half of the eruption the subsidence rate at the top of the volcano is roughly stable at 13 3 mm month these values are in good agreement with tiltmeter data collected on etna during the same period and with the estimated volume of erupted material no significant deformation can be observed during the last month of eruption inflation of the volcano seems to resume immediately after the end of the eruption at a rate of 3 mm month

the mw 8 1 antofagasta north chile earthquake of july 30 1995 first results from teleseismic and geodetic data a strong mw 8 1 subduction earthquake occurred on july 30 1995 in antofagasta northern chile this is one of the largest events during this century in the region it ruptured the southernmost portion of a seismic gap between 18 s and 25 s in 1992 we had used gps to survey a network with about 50 benchmarks covering a region nearly 500 km long n s and 200 km wide e w part of these marks were re surveyed with gps after the 1995 earthquake comparison with 1992 positions indicate relative horizontal displacement towards the trench reaching 0 7 m the inland subsided several decimeters the mejillones peninsula was uplifted by more than 15 cm teleseismic body wave modelling of vbb records gives a subduction focal mechanism and source time function with three distinct episodes of moment release and southward directivity modelling the displacement field using a dislocation with uniform slip in elastic half space suggests a rupture zone with 19 24 eastward dip extending to a depth no greater than 50 km with n s length of 180 km and an average slip of about 5 m the component of right lateral slip inferred both from the teleseismic and geodetic data does not require slip partitioning at the plate boundary that the well constrained northern end of the 1995 rupture zone lies under the southern part of the mejillones peninsula increases the probability for a next rupture in the gap north of it

estimation of an earthquake focal mechanism from a satellite radar interferogram application to the december 4 1992 landers aftershock using the interferometric fringes generated by the phase difference between a pair of synthetic aperture radar sar images acquired by the ers 1 satellite we estimate the focal mechanism of a small shallow thrust earthquake the inversion procedure is an iterative linearized least squares algorithm based on a standard elastic dislocation formulation for coseismic displacements our preferred estimate is a thrust focal mechanism with its hypocenter at n34 35 0 4 km w116 91 0 2 km 2 6 0 3 km depth on a plane dipping southward beneath the san bernardino mountains with a moment magnitude mw of 5 4 the strike dip and rake are n106 e 7 28 4 and 93 4 respectively on a fault 3 1 0 5 km wide and 2 9 0 4 km long the precision of these estimates is competitive with seismological determinations

fault block rotations at the edge of a zone of continental extension southwest turkey the ne sw trending burdur acigol and baklan basins of southwest turkey are bounded by normal faults which became active in quaternary times prior to this a more widely spaced system of pliocene basins had existed each of the quaternary basins has a half graben geometry with a major nw dipping fault on its southeast side previous studies of the 1971 burdur earthquake caused by movement on the fault bounding the burdur basin have shown this fault to flatten slightly at depth deformation in the hangingwall of the fault controlling the pliocene basin in the burdur region suggests a planar fault geometry it is suggested that the pliocene fault rotated to its present shallow orientation then became inactive and acted as a detachment at depth for the more recent quaternary fault quaternary faults bounding the burdur acigol and baklan basins have a sinistral strike slip component with slip vectors indicating extension in an nw se direction this is at variance with regional n s extension in western turkey a solution for this contrast is found by invoking block rotations about vertical axes in a deforming zone between the rapidly extending aegean region to the west and the stable unstretched anatolian plateau to the east

source parameters of the 1 october 1995 dinar turkey earthquake from sar interferometry and seismic bodywave modelling abstract the 1 october 1995 m s 6 1 dinar earthquake ruptured a 10 km section of the nw se dinar civril fault there are discrepancies between the published source parameters from seismic data with seismic moments in disagreement by over a factor of two we use both sar interferometry and seismic bodywave modelling to determine earthquake source parameters an interferogram generated from ers 1 2 sar imagery spanning the event and separated by 5 months is used to derive source parameters by a downhill simplex inversion with multiple monte carlo restarts we model the displacements in the satellite line of sight initially using uniform slip on a rectangular dislocation in an elastic half space the resultant model fault plane agrees in strike and location with the observed surface break but systematic residuals exist in the line of sight deformation field resulting in a r m s residual of 20 mm in the interferogram the residuals are reduced if the depth distribution of slip is allowed to vary spatially in four segments along a continuous fault plane our best fitting solution with a r m s misfit of 8 mm reveals two distinct areas of slip on the fault plane strike 145 dip 49 rake 270 a main rupture slipping by 1 44 m between depths of 1 and 8 km becoming deeper to the se and matching the observed surface rupture and an along strike continuation to the nw of the same fault plane but between depths of 8 and 13 km and not associated with a surface break the total geodetic moment 4 5 0 1 10 18 nm is more than twice as large as published seismic moments based on the inversion of p waveforms alone but close to the harvard cmt moment 4 7 10 18 nm we use sh waveforms in addition to the p waves used previously to determine an alternative seismic source mechanism sh waves constrain the depth to be shallower than solutions based on p waves alone agreeing with the depths from the interferometric inversion and resulting in a larger moment 3 1 0 4 10 18 nm than the previous bodywave estimates 2 2 1 10 18 nm the cmt moment reduces in magnitude to a similar size 3 3 10 18 nm if the centroid depth and fault dip are constrained to the values determined from bodywave modelling and interferometry thus the geodetic moment is 40 bigger than the moment determined from seismology

coseismic deformation and dislocation models of the 1989 loma prieta earthquake derived from global positioning system measurements global positioning system gps surveys were used to determine coseismic displacements within the epicentral region of the 1989 loma prieta earthquake near santa cruz the california highway department caltrans conducted the preearthquake survey in february and march 1989 using single frequency gps receivers in march 1990 we reoccupied eight of the caltrans stations using dual frequency receivers relative displacements were computed by differencing the station coordinates determined from these two surveys displacements were determined relative to sites remote from the earthquake by incorporating gps measurements from loma prieta station lp1 to the very long baseline interferometry vlbi site at fort ord examination of repeated measurements in the single frequency preearthquake survey indicates precision is 10 mm in the horizontal although it may be as low as 40 mm in the weakly connected part of the network the precision in the vertical is generally 30 40 mm in contrast the largest observed coseismic displacement is 410 mm horizontal and 341 mm vertical we use a quasi newton method to estimate the parameters of the uniform rectangular dislocation source that best fits the observed displacements the best fitting dislocation dips 68 southwest extending from 3 to 16 km depth strikes n66 w and has 1 8 m of dip slip and 1 2 m of strike slip the best fitting dislocation overlaps the aftershocks but is rotated 15 counterclockwise from the trend of the afterhock zone we find that the data can be fit nearly as well with a dislocation that is constrained to lie in the plane of the aftershocks in this case the fault extends from 5 to 15 km depth the constrained model explains 96 of the data both models have a moment of m0 2 9 1019 n m we also use the quasi newton method to estimate rectangular dislocation models from the leveling data of marshall et al 1991 and the trilateration and gps data of it lisowski et al 1990 in contrast to the previous studies we find that both of these data sets are independently best fit with dislocations embedded within the aftershock zone

the 2016 mw 6 0 hutubi earthquake a blind thrust event along the northern tian shan front abstract the tian shan range which trends e w along the southern margin of the junggar basin is one of the longest and most active intracontinental orogenic belts in central asia on 8 december 2016 05 15 04 utc a mw 6 0 earthquake ruptured the northern tian shan front here we use sentinel 1 radar imagery to investigate the deformation and source parameters related to this event the co seismic surface deformation was predominated by uplift without surface rupture ascending and descending interferograms indicate that the event triggered small co seismic deformations with maximum line of sight displacements of 22 mm and 24 mm respectively although the north dipping and south dipping plane solutions can both fit the observations well the north dipping solution with a dip of 58 is preferred in consideration of the relocated aftershocks and regional geological structure significant slip is located between depths of 12 km and 17 km suggesting that the event was caused by a completely blind thrust fault this blind rupture is characterized largely by a compact thrusting patch with a peak slip of 56 cm at a depth of 13 km the source model generates a geodetic moment of 6 678 1017 n m corresponding to a mw 5 85 event both the interferometric synthetic aperture radar modeling and the aftershock locations indicate that the rupture plane is linked to the huoerguosi manas tugulu fault at a depth of 16 km a typical locking depth in the tian shan we suggest that the 2016 hutubi earthquake more likely occurred on a back thrust of the huoerguosi manas tugulu fault and the back thrust is interpreted to represent a preexisting normal fault beneath the qigu anticline belt that was tectonically inverted during the cenozoic

an experiment in systematic study of global seismicity centroid moment tensor solutions for 201 moderate and large earthquakes of 1981 data from the global digital seismograph network were used to obtain centroid moment tensor solutions using the method of dziewonski et al 1981 results were obtained for 201 earthquakes ranging in seismic moment from 7 1023 to 3 1027 dyne cm the wide dynamic range of the sro asro stations allows us to investigate using the same algorithm series of events among which the smallest and the largest may differ in moment by a factor as large as 1000 among the events studied is a particularly interesting series in january 1981 off the island of honshu the main shock was preceded by three foreshocks and followed by four aftershocks all falling within the range of our analysis there is an indication that the source mechanism changes with the size of the event statistical analysis of the results for all earthquakes reveals that the half duration of shallow and intermediate events is approximated by 1 6 10 8 m01 3 the shifts in origin time for deep focus earthquakes are indicative of the general complexity of these events which depends only weakly on the seismic moment the extreme departures from a double couple mechanism seem to depend both on the moment and on the focal depth while for shallow earthquakes these departures decrease from a maximum at about 1025 dyne cm with increasing moment the reverse appears to be true with respect to deep focus earthquakes shallow earthquakes north of new guinea and along the solomon islands show systematic and substantial departures from the double couple mechanism

a non linear geodetic data inversion using abic for slip distribution on a fault with an unknown dip angle summary we have developed a method of geodetic data inversion for slip distribution on a fault with an unknown dip angle a common strategy for obtaining slip distribution in previous studies is to first determine the fault geometry by minimizing the square misfit under the assumption of a uniform slip on a rectangular fault and then apply the usual linear inversion technique to estimate a slip distribution on the determined fault it is not guaranteed however that the fault determined under the assumption of a uniform slip gives the best fault geometry for a spatially variable slip distribution the inverse problem is non linear for cases with unknown fault geometries but the non linearity of the problems is actually weak when we can assume the fault surface to be a flat plane in particular when a clear trace of coseismic faults is observed on the earth s surface only the dip angle is an unknown parameter to determine the fault geometry then we regarded the dip angle as an hyperparameter that prescribed the structure of parametric models and obtained the best estimate of the dip angle using akaike s bayesian information criterion abic with the best estimate of the dip angle we can obtain the slip distribution on the fault based on the maximum likelihood principle we applied the method to the insar data of the 1995 dinar turkey earthquake and obtained a much lower dip angle than the previous analyses

geodetic strain of greece in the interval 1892 1992 a first order triangulation of greece was carried out in the 1890s reoccupation using global positioning system receivers of 46 of the 93 original markers yielded estimates of the deformation of the region over the intervening interval broad regions have similar geodetic strain over the 100 year time span strain north of the gulf of korinthos is predominantly north south extension though with a significant east west component the central peloponnisos is relatively stable whereas the gulfs of the southern peloponnisos are all characterized by uniaxial east west extension the seismic expression of strain for the entire region calculated from the seismic moment tensors of earthquakes of m s 5 8 during the past 100 years accounts for only 20 50 of the geodetically determined strain at a scale of 50 100 km the fraction of the strain that is expressed seismically varies much more than this range in particular whereas seismic strain in the eastern gulf of korinthos over the past 100 years is commensurate with the geodetic strain there is rapid extension across the western gulf of korinthos 0 3 strain yr 1 with negligible seismic strain for the 100 year period prior to 1992 the egion earthquake of june 1995 in the western gulf of korinthos released only a small proportion 20 of the elastic strain that had accumulated in that region the observed distribution of displacements can be explained by the relative rotation of two plates with a broad accommodation zone between them but it is equally consistent with the deformation that would be expected of a sheet of fluid moving toward a low pressure boundary at the hellenic trench a simple calculation implies that if the region does behave as a fluid then its effective viscosity is 10 22 10 23 pa s such viscosities are consistent with the deformation of a lithosphere obeying a rheological law similar to that obtained for olivine in the laboratory

analysis of accelerations from the 1 october 1995 dinar turkey earthquake the dinar earthquake 1 october 1995 occurred in southwestern turkey and had a moment magnitude of 6 4 and a normal faulting mechanism the earthquake caused 90 deaths over 200 injuries and a large amount of damage it was recorded by seven strong motion accelerographs the strong motion accelerograph at dinar is on the edge of the surface projection of the fault the record from dinar is possibly unique in its proximity to the causative fault for this type of mechanism the dinar strong motion station is in a small stiff building on soft sediments with a shallow water table the peak acceleration was 0 32 g on the horizontal component perpendicular to the fault trace the earthquake was caused by rupture on the dinar fault which is a normal fault trending generally toward the south southeast with the hanging wall on the west there was surface rupture along about a 12 km segment of this fault the dinar strong motion station is at the south end of the fault under 1 km from the nearest surface trace the hypocenter was at the south end beneath dinar with rupture propagating toward the north and away from the strong motion site a specific composite source model was found that reproduces the statistical characteristics of the ground motions and also approximately reproduces the low frequency waveform in the strong motion in this model the fault length l is 12 5 km the width w is 17 3 km and the moment m 0 is 4 72 10 25 dyne cm the fault strikes 130 and dips 45 toward the southwest from the surface to 12 km for the composite parameters the largest subevent r max is 4 0 km the rupture velocity is 1 5 km sec and the subevent stress drop is 60 bars after anderson 1997 the composite source model parameters imply that the static stress drop was 36 bars the radiated seismic energy in this event was 4 3 10 21 ergs the apparent stress was 18 bars and the savage wood ratio was 1 0 most of the seismic energy is released at depths greater than 2 km the major asperity is beneath the location where synthetic aperture radar interferometry found the maximum surface deformation

seismic strain rates in regions of distributed continental deformation we compare the rates and configurations of seismic deformation determined from moment tensor mechanisms of earthquakes in five continental regions with the rates and configurations expected if the seismicity reflected the relative plate motions in the regions the five regions the aegean iran california western new guinea and central asia are characterized by high levels of seismicity distributed over hundreds to thousands of kilometers from the accepted plate boundaries the earthquake mechanisms are compiled primarily from the catalog of centroid moment tensor solutions which is nearly complete over the interval 1977 1987 for earthquakes greater than ms 5 the thickness of the seismogenic layer in each region is constrained by the results of modeling broadband body wave phases and of previous earthquake studies in the aegean california and western new guinea the observed configurations of deformation agree with a simple model of distributed accommodation of relative plate motion in iran and central asia the moment tensors indicate that there is appreciable strain parallel to the strikes of the belts we augment our 10 year estimates of seismic deformation with the available historical moment and magnitude estimates for the five regions and find that moderate and large earthquakes account for between 25 and 70 of the deformation of the seismogenic layer

signal from noise in geomagnetic field modelling denoising data for secular variation studies summary we analyse the residuals between a continuous geomagnetic field model of the internal field c3fm and observed secular variation a large part of the residual variations correlate closely with the dst index suggesting an origin from unmodelled external field variations removal of this signal enhances the resolution of fine scale detail in secular variation this is useful in considering the phenomenology of geomagnetic jerks the residual variations between different observatories show even better correlation suggesting the possibility of the construction of a proxy for the dst index notable cross correlation is also seen between the residuals and dst index with a lag of about 55 months

the 2006 march 25 fin earthquakes iran insights into the vertical extents of faulting in the zagros simply folded belt summary we investigate the depth of faulting and its connection with surface folding in the zagros simply folded belt of iran our focus is a sequence of earthquakes mw 5 7 5 5 5 2 5 0 4 9 that struck the fin region in the south eastern simply folded belt on 2006 march 25 modelling ground displacements measured with radar interferometry we find that either n or s dipping model reverse faults can reproduce the observed fringe patterns despite the uncertainty in fault orientation we can constrain the vertical extents of rupture to between a top depth of 5 6 km and a bottom depth of 9 10 km consistent with the 8 km centroid depth of the largest earthquake we suggest that the faulting ruptured the thick competent group of paleozoic and mesozoic conglomerates and platform carbonates which makes up the lower part of the sedimentary cover the rupture probably terminated within the precambrian hormuz salt at its base and the cretaceous gurpi marls at its top these mechanically weak layers act as barriers to rupture separating faulting within the competent group from deformation in the layers above and below the pattern of coseismic surface uplift is centred on the common limb of the fin syncline and guniz anticline but is oblique by 20 to the trend of these open symmetric whaleback folds and also overlaps a section of the fin syncline axis these observations suggest that locally surface folding is decoupled from the underlying reverse faulting although the fin syncline and guniz anticline are symmetric structures some other nearby folds show a strong asymmetry with steep or overturned southern limbs consistent with growth above n dipping reverse faults this suggests that the simply folded belt contains a combination of forced folds and detachment folds we also investigate the distribution of locally recorded aftershocks in the weeks following the main earthquakes most of these occurred at depths of 10 30 km with a particularly high concentration of events at 20 25 km these aftershocks therefore lie within the crystalline basement rather than the sedimentary cover and are vertically separated from the main rupture this study confirms earlier suggestions that earthquakes of mw 5 6 are capable of being generated within the thick competent group of paleozoic and mesozoic sediments as well as in the basement below the hormuz salt formation