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Reviewing the active stress field in Central Asia by using a modified stress tensor approach

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Abstract

Central Asia and its surroundings constitute a geodynamically complicated region, where almost all types of tectonic patterns can be observed. A triple junction, collision, and subduction zones, as well as extended fault systems of all types prevail in different parts of this region and compose one of the most interesting and complex geotectonic environments on Earth. This complicated setting is also associated with intense deformation, resulting in a large number of high seismicity zones, where numerous strong earthquakes occur, also extending, in some cases, to intermediate depths. Several previous studies have focused on specific seismotectonic zones in order to assess the active tectonic setting and the associated stress regime. We attempt to provide a unified but detailed picture of the stress field variability for the entire central Asia region, using the well-known inversion method proposed by Gephart and Forsyth (1984), modified in the present work on the basis of Fisher statistics. For this application, we employ a large number of focal mechanisms, spatially separated in 138 data groups. Τhe proposed modified algorithm (FD-BSM) examines the Fisher distribution of all possible stress principal axes solutions and select the one that: (a) shows the smallest angle variation from the Fisher mean in all three principal distributions and (b) minimizes the difference between the theoretical and observed slip vectors of the employed fault plane solution data. Synthetic tests and comparison of the corresponding results with real data show that, in cases where the stress regime is not clearly uniform or the number of available data is rather small, the models selected by the modified approach (FD-BSM) are more robust and show better spatial coherence compared to the initial Gephart and Forsyth (1984) method or alternative techniques such as the method of Michael (1984, 1987) as adapted by Vavrycuk (2014).

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the editor Jiri Zahradnik for his constructive suggestions, as well as the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful reviews and comments. Most maps were drafted using the GMT software developed by Wessel and Smith (1991).

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  1. Department of Geophysics, Aristotle University, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece

    I. Karagianni, C. B. Papazachos, E. M. Scordilis & G. F. Karakaisis

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  1. I. Karagianni
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  2. C. B. Papazachos
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  3. E. M. Scordilis
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Correspondence to I. Karagianni.

Electronic supplementary material

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ESM_1(a-g)

Sub-regions with political borders, capitals and names of major faults (Purple: thrust faults, yellow: normal faults, red: strike-slip faults). (DOCX 4824 kb)

ESM_2

(Appendix 1) Data-group code names per sub-region and the corresponding number of employed focal mechanisms for stress inversion. (DOCX 28 kb)

ESM_3

(Appendix 2) Results for all data groups determined by FMSI and FD-BSM algorithms. The stress field is denoted as C = compressional, E = extensional, SS = strike-slip, RE = radial extension, RC = radial compression, TT = transtensional or TP = transpressional. (DOCX 117 kb)

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Karagianni, I., Papazachos, C.B., Scordilis, E.M. et al. Reviewing the active stress field in Central Asia by using a modified stress tensor approach. J Seismol 19, 541–565 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-015-9481-4

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