An international team led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has successfully determined the age and formation process of the East Anatolian Fault, which extends from eastern to south-central Turkey and contributes to the formation of the Anatolian tectonic plate.

The fault zone was the site of two devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria in February 2023. While the researchers’ findings don’t help predict the timing or magnitude of earthquakes, they do allow geologists to learn more about how long the area has been seismically active and how earthquakes have shaped the terrain over time, which can help with infrastructure decisions. and building layout.

The faults we see on the Earth’s surface are cracks caused by the movement of the planet’s massive tectonic plates. These movements cause stress, and the release of this stress causes earthquakes felt by people at the surface.

“There are many tectonic plates on Earth,” said McKnight University Professor Emeritus Donna Whitney of the University of Minnesota N.G. Winchell School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, the paper’s lead author. “Over time, its shape, size, and location have changed, but we rarely see the same shape. Geologically, the Anatolian plate was formed relatively recently, so by studying the geology it is easier for us to draw conclusions about the processes that formed it. There are many questions about the age of the Anatolian Plate and the East Anatolian Fault. There was controversy, but with our data we were able to show that they probably formed five million years ago.”

The researchers’ findings stem from the Whitney project, funded by the National Science Foundation, called Continental Dynamics-Central Anatolian Tectonics (CD-CAT), which brings together researchers from many scientific disciplines and countries to study the Anatolian Plate and its associated fault zones.

Whitney and his team began studying the Anatolian Plate in 2011 because they found evidence that over tens of millions of years the center of the plate was tilted, a process that usually only occurs at the edges of tectonic plates. Then, five million years ago, radical changes occurred. Since then, almost all tectonic movements have concentrated on the two major faults that caused the earthquake: the North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault.

By dating the cooling of rocks in the Eastern Anatolian Rift and examining seismic data collected during the project, CD-CAT researchers determined the structure of the continents and underlying mantle in the region, confirming that this five million-year-old spot was marked. Formation of the Anatolian Plate.

“Knowing the seismic history of this area is really important for predicting disasters related to how people interact with the landscape,” Whitney said. “We can’t predict that this fault will have an X-magnitude earthquake at any given time, but we can get an idea of ​​the fault’s past activity, how large events were, and how much the fault motion affected the landmass.” We need to understand these structures because people live near these structures and the infrastructure is located near them.” Source