Crustal Anisotropy Beneath the Western Segment of North Anatolian Fault Zone from Local Shear-Wave Splitting

Abstract:

Shear-wave splitting from local earthquakes provides valuable knowledge on anisotropy of the upper crust. Upper-crustal anisotropy is widely interpreted as due to aligned fluid-filled cracks or pores. Differential stress is thought to close cracks aligned perpendicular to the maximum principal stress and leaves cracks open that are aligned perpendicular to the minimum horizontal compressional stress. In other cases local shear-wave splitting has been found to be aligned with regional faulting. Temporal variations in local splitting patterns might provide hints of changes in stress orientation related to earthquakes or volcanoes.

 North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) is a large-scale continental strike slip fault system originating at the Karlıova Junction in the east where it intersects the East Anatolian Fault (EAF) and extends west cutting across the entire Northern Turkey towards the Aegean Sea and the mainland Greece. Our primary focus is to provide constraints on the crustal anisotropy beneath the western segment of the North Anatolian Fault Zone with the use of a data set collected from a dense temporary seismic network consisting of 70 stations that was deployed in early May 2012 and operated for 18 months in the Sakarya region and the surroundings during the Faultlab experiment. For the local shear wave splitting analysis, out of 1344 events, we extracted 90 well located earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 2.0. Local shear-wave splitting makes use of earthquakes close to and nearly directly below the recording station. Incidence angles of less than 45 degrees were used to avoid the free-surface effect and resulting non-linear particle motion. Basically, two essential parameters for each station-event pair is needed for shear wave splitting calculations. One of them is fast polarization direction (ɸ) and the other is delay time (δ_t) between the fast and slow components of the shear wave. In this study, delay times vary between 0,02 and 0,25 seconds clearly reveals the existence of crustal anisotropy. We are also going to attempt to correlate the fast directions obtained for the group of stations with the tectonic regime of the region taking into account these parameters.