Macroscopic Fault Structure of the 1911 Mw8.1 Chon Kemin Earthquake (Tien Shan, Kyrgyzstan) from Combined Seismic Imaging, Palaeo-Seismological Investigations and Historial Seismicity

Abstract:

Earthquakes in low-strain regions and their driving forces are still sparsely studied and understood, and constitute serious first-order research questions. Data acquisition concerning paleo-earthquakes, related hazards, and tectonic activity beyond historical records plays an important role. Such information can be obtained with tools from tectonic geomorphology, geophysics, historic seismicity, and paleo-seismology that should span a variety of time and length scales.
The Chon-Kemin Valley in the northern Tien Shan (Kyrgyzstan) is a small, intermontane basin of unknown origin framed by a network of active faults. In the year 1911, the Chon-Kemin earthquake (Mw=8.1) activated fault structures of about 200 km length which also ruptured the surface along the Chon-Kemin Valley and caused numerous landslides and rock avalanches of up to several tens of millions of cubic meters in volume. The Chon-Kemin earthquake was one of a series of strong seismic events that affected the northern Tien Shan between 1885 and 1938.
A seismic survey across the Chon-Kemin Valley was conducted to investigate the subsurface velocity structure of the valley and its surrounding faults. Tomographic inversion techniques were applied to first-arrival traveltimes of refracted P waves, and the seismic data were screened for reflection signatures. Additionally, the region was analyzed through paleo-seismological trenching.
Tomographic and reflection images identified a shallow basin structure bounded by a set of thrust faults in the south only which - in part – correlate with the surface trace of the rupture. The deformation seems to be distributed in time and space across several sub-parallel fault strands. Synthesis of historical (analog) recordings of this earthquake provide new insights into the source mechanisms and processes.