Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Elsevier
Résumé : International audience
The Taiwan area, where the Philippine Sea Plate collides with Eurasia, is one of the most seismically active areas in the world and has been consequently struck repeatedly by destructive earthquakes. To better constrain the occurrence of large earthquakes, we have conducted two cruises in 2012 and 2013 from which five piston, gravity and box-cores were retrieved from selected sites in targeted areas that contain continuous and accurate turbidite deposition offshore eastern Taiwan. Forty-seven turbidite layers deposited between 675 BC and 2012 AD have been described in the cores with facies varying from silty clay to coarse sand. We modeled each turbidite layer using the sedimentation rate deduced from radiocarbon age measurements performed on planktonic foraminifers. Precise dating based on 210Pb–137Cs chronology provided ages for the XXth century turbidites. Coring sites' locations, biotic association within turbidites beds and seismic calibration over the instrumental period, suggest that earthquakes are the most likely triggering mechanisms of turbidity currents over the last 2700 years. Calibration of correlations between turbidites and instrumental earthquakes allowed us to determine the minimum magnitude of recorded events (Mw = 6.8) and the maximum distance between the epicenter and the slope failure. Turbidites' synchroneity between cores has been tested but results showed that this criterion cannot be used in our study area because of the high level of seismicity, i.e., a M > 6.8 earthquake recurrence interval much smaller than the uncertainty on radiocarbon ages. The excellent accuracy of dating allows correlating all the turbidites deposited since 1920 with instrumental earthquakes. For each core, we established a return time ranging between 112 and 147 years for the period pre-1900 and ~ 27 and 34 years for the period post-1900. The discrepancy between pre-1900 and post-1900 recurrence either suggests, that slope stability varies, with higher slope instability after 1900 possibly due to increased sediment delivery by rivers.
ISSN: 0040-1951

hal-01467627
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01467627
DOI : 10.1016/j.tecto.2016.04.030

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Elsevier
Résumé : International audience
Northwest Iran is characterized by a high level of historical and instrumental seismicity related to the ongoing convergence between the Arabian and Eurasian plates. In this region, the main right-lateral strike-slip fault known as the North Tabriz fault (NTF) forms the central portion of a large crustal fault system called the Tabriz fault system (TFS). The NTF is a major seismic source along which at least three strong and destructive earthquakes have occurred since 858 AD. The two most recent destructive seismic events occurred in 1721 AD and 1780 AD, rupturing the SE and NW fault segments, respectively. This paper reports paleoseismological and quantitative geomorphologic investigations on the SE segment of the NTF, between the cities of Bostanabad and Tabriz. These observations help to improve our understanding of the seismic hazard for Tabriz city and its surrounding areas. Our field investigations revealed evidence of successive faulting events since the Late Quaternary. Paleoseismic investigations indicate that since 33.5 kyr, the SE segment of the NTF has experienced at least three major (M>7.5) seismic events, including the 1721 AD earthquake (M=7.6–7.7). Along the NW segment of the fault, however, our results suggest that the amount of strong (M~7.5) seismic events during the same period is significantly greater than along the SE segment. One possible explanation of such a difference in seismic activity is that the Late Quaternary-Holocene coseismic slip rate is decreasing along the NTF from the northwest to the southeast. This explanation contradicts the former hypothesis of a constant slip rate along the whole length of the NTF. In addition, more distributed deformation along several parallel fault branches, in a wider fault zone of the SE segment of the NTF may be considered as additional evidence for the estimation of lower rate of deformation along the fault segment. Such a slip distribution pattern can explain the existence of smaller (~300 m) Pliocene-Quaternary cumulative dextral offsets along the SE fault segment than the measured cumulative offsets along the NW segment (~800 m) of the NTF.
ISSN: 0040-1951

hal-01089420
http://hal.upmc.fr/hal-01089420
http://hal.upmc.fr/hal-01089420/document
http://hal.upmc.fr/hal-01089420/file/Solaymani%20Azad%20et%20al.%2C%202014%20%28accepted%29.pdf
DOI : 10.1016/j.tecto.2014.11.010