Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
8908816 | Tectonophysics | 2018 | 54 Pages |
Abstract
We resolved displacement on buried stream channels that record the past 3400Â years of slip history for the Jordan Gorge (JGF) section of the Dead Sea fault in Israel. Based on three-dimensional (3D) trenching, slip in the past millennium amounts to only 2.7Â m, similar to that determined in previous studies, whereas the previous millennium experienced two to three times this amount of displacement with nearly 8Â m of cumulative slip, indicating substantial short term variations in slip rate. The slip rate averaged over the past 3400Â years, as determined from 3D trenching, is 4.1Â mm/yr, which agrees well with geodetic estimates of strain accumulation, as well as with longer-term geologic slip rate estimates. Our results indicate that: 1) the past 1200Â years appear to significantly lack slip, which may portend a significant increase in future seismic activity; 2) short-term slip rates for the past two millennia have varied by more than a factor of two and suggest that past behavior is best characterized by clustering of earthquakes. From these observations, the earthquake behavior of the Jordan Gorge fault best fits is a “weak segment model” where the relatively short fault section (20Â km), bounded by releasing steps, fails on its own in moderate earthquakes, or ruptures with adjacent segments.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Earth-Surface Processes
Authors
Neta Wechsler, Thomas K. Rockwell, Yann Klinger,