Active tectonics of the Alpine--Himalayan Belt between western Turkey and Pakistan

Abstract

Over 80 new fault plane solutions, combined with satellite imagery as well as both modern and historical observations of earthquake faulting, are used to investigate the active tectonics of the Middle East between western Turkey and Pakistan. The deformation of the western part of this region is dominated by the movement of continental material laterally away from the Lake Van region in eastern Turkey. This movement helps to avoid crustal thickening in the Van region, and allows some of the shortening between Arabia and Eurasia to be taken up by the thrusting of continental material over oceanic-type basement in the southern Caspian, Mediterranean, Makran and Black Sea. Thus central Turkey, bounded by the North and East Anatolian strike-slip faults, is moving west from the Van region and overrides the eastern Mediterranean at two intermediate depth seismic zones: one extending between Antalya Bay and southern Cyprus, and the other further west in the Hellenic Trench. The motion of northern Iran eastwards from the Van region is achieved mainly by a conjugate system of strike-slip faults and leads to the low angle thrusting of Iran over the southern Caspian Sea. The seismicity of the Caucasus shows predominantly shortening perpendicular to the regional strike, but there is also some minor elongation along the strike of the belt as the Causcasus overrides the Caspian and Black Seas. The deformation of the eastern part of this region is dominated by the shortening of Iran against the stable borders of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. The north-east direction of compression seen in Zagros is also seen in north-east Iran and the Kopet Dag, where the shortening is taken up by a combination of strike-slip and thrust faulting. Large structural as well as palaeomagnetic rotations are likely to have occurred in NE Iran as a result of this style of deformation. North-south strike-slip faults in southern Iran allow some movement of material away from the collision zone in NE Iran towards the Makran subduction zone, where genuinely intermediate depth seismicity is seen. Within this broad deforming belt large areas, such as central Turkey, NW Iran (Azerbaijan), central Iran and the southern Caspian, appear to be almost aseismic and therefore to behave as relatively rigid blocks surrounded by active belts 200-300 km wide. The motion of these blocks can usefully be described by poles of rotation. The poles presented in this paper predict motions consistent with those observed and also predict the opening of the Gulf of Iskenderun NE of Cyprus, the change within the Zagros mountains from strike-slip faulting in the NW to intense thrusting in the SE, and the relatively feeble seismicity in SE Iran (Baluchistan). This description also explains why the north-south structures along the Iran-Afghanistan border do not cut the east-west ranges of the Makran. Within the active belts surrounding the relatively aseismic blocks a continuum approach is needed for a description of the deformation, even though motions at the surface may be concentrated on faults. The evolution of fault systems within the active zones is controlled by geometric constraints, such as the requirement that simultaneously active faults do not, in general, intersect. Many of the active processes discussed in this paper, particularly large-scale rotations and lateral movement along the regional strike, are likely to have caused substantial complexities in older mountain belts and should be accounted for in any reconstructions of them.