## 7 Discussion and Conclusions  
The seismic activity that manifested in 2019 in the offshore area north of Lefkada Island motivated our investigation for the identification of the geometry and kinematics of the activated fault segments, given that they are located at the junction between the two major active boundaries, namely the dextral strike slip Kefalonia Transform Fault Zone and the collision between the Adriatic microplate and the Greek mainland. It was expected to unveil the mode of kinematics and fill in the gap for the transition from transform to collision, adding value to the exhaustive relocation and manual picking of arrival phases for as many earthquakes as possible of the recorded ones, and the first polarities of the stronger shocks that are associated with the activated fault segments. The exact location and geometry of the offshore part of the KTFZ and its termination against the thrust front was not identified with seismological data up to now. This lack of knowledge about its northern extent is mostly due to the lack of moderate earthquakes at this location during recent years where the seismological network detectability became efficient to provide the data for this analysis. The geometry of the offshore faults identified in this study exhibiting mostly strike slip motion do not match the orientation of the Lefkada fault branch. The difference in strike is \(\sim\)20\({}^{\circ}\), with the incorporation of a small thrust component in agreement with the adjacency of the compressional stress field regime. The three observed clusters that are traced from the relocated seismicity in this study exhibit spatial properties differentiation and reveal the 3D local structure, given that the focal depths were relocated with high accuracy. The northern fault segment, although traced in already suggested  
Figure 9: Top: the percent difference in the \(b\) values (blue circles) compared with the reference value (cyan dashed-dot line). The vertical dotted line with the red star corresponds to the main shock occurrence time and the black dashed vertical line to the occurrence time of the foreshock. Bottom: same as in top but for the estimated \(b\) values. kinematic models [38; 39], is for the first time to be identified and investigated with seismological recordings, and in particular, with such fine details. [38] referred to a right lateral strike-slip system that resulted from the collision of western Greece with the Apulian platform, and runs through western Greece to the KTFZ. The position of the identified activated fault segments, their strike and sense of slip agree with the active fault mapping and suggested regional tectonics of [40]. A clockwise rotation of the Ionian Islands and Akarrannia block accommodated by major marginal strike-slip zones that appeared segmented along their strike was suggested by [41]. Available fault plane solutions of moderate and strong earthquakes (M \(\geq\) 5.0) in the Lefkada segment of the KTFZ and the collision front extend as far as in the past such as 1973, from various sources ([42] for the earthquake of 1973/11/04, [43] for the earthquake of 25/02/1994 and the GCMT catalogue). Nevertheless, there are not any available focal mechanism solutions for earthquakes of such magnitude in the study area. Fault plane solutions for smaller magnitude earthquakes in the offshore area north of and close to Lefkada Island can be found in several studies ([8; 44; 45] among others). Those solutions are either covering the offshore area that is the southern edge of our study area, thus consistently following the NNE-SSW strike of the main fault zone, or they are not accompanied by a highly accurate focal distribution as in our study, because even in the most recent cases of the 2003 and 2015 earthquakes, the seismic activity in the area of the main fault under study was not intense. Figure 10 shows the identified active structures and a kinematic sketch of the study area.