The Hazard Potential of the Western Segment of the Makran Subduction Zone, Northern Arabian Sea
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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257632785 The hazard potential of the western segment of the Makran subduction zone, northern Arabian Sea Article in Natural Hazards · January 2012 DOI: 10.1007/s11069-012-0355-6 CITATIONS READS 9 165 6 authors, including: Rajendran C. P. 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Nat Hazards DOI 10.1007/s11069-012-0355-6 ORIGINAL PAPER The hazard potential of the western segment of the Makran subduction zone, northern Arabian Sea C. P. Rajendran • Kusala Rajendran • Majid Shah-hosseini • Abdolmajid Naderi Beni • C. M. Nautiyal • Ronia Andrews Received: 3 January 2012 / Accepted: 10 August 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract Evaluating the hazard potential of the Makran subduction zone requires understanding the previous records of the large earthquakes and tsunamis. We address this problem by searching for earthquake and tectonic proxies along the Makran Coast and linking those observations with the available constraints on historical seismicity and the tell-tale characteristics of sea floor morphology. The earthquake of Mw 8.1 of 1945 and the consequent tsunami that originated on the eastern part of the Makran are the only his- torically known hazardous events in this region. The seismic status of the western part of the subduction zone outside the rupture area of the 1945 earthquake remains an enigma. The near-shore shallow stratigraphy of the central part of Makran near Chabahar shows evidence of seismically induced liquefaction that we attribute to the distant effects of the 1945 earthquake. The coastal sites further westward around Jask are remarkable for the absence of liquefaction features, at least at the shallow level. Although a negative evi- dence, this possibly implies that the western part of Makran Coast region may not have been impacted by near-field large earthquakes in the recent past—a fact also supported by the analysis of historical data. On the other hand, the elevated marine terraces on the western Makran and their uplift rates are indicative of comparable degree of long-term tectonic activity, at least around Chabahar. The offshore data suggest occurrences of recently active submarine slumps on the eastern part of the Makran, reflective of shaking events, owing to the great 1945 earthquake. The ocean floor morphologic features on the western segment, on the contrary, are much subdued and the prograding delta lobes on the shelf edge also remain intact. The coast on the western Makran, in general, shows indi- cations of progradation and uplift. The various lines of evidence thus suggest that although the western segment is potentially seismogenic, large earthquakes have not occurred there C. P. Rajendran (&) K. Rajendran R. Andrews Indian Institute of Science,Á Centre forÁ Earth Sciences, Bangalore 560012, India e-mail: [email protected] M. Shah-hosseini A. N. Beni Iranian National CenterÁ for Oceanography, Tehran 1411813389, Iran C. M. Nautiyal Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, Lucknow 226007, India 123 Nat Hazards in the recent past, at least during the last 600 years. The recurrence period of earthquakes may range up to 1,000 years or more, an assessment based on the age of the youngest dated coastal ridge. The long elapsed time points to the fact that the western segment may have accumulated sufficient slip to produce a major earthquake. Keywords Makran subduction zone Hazard potential Earthquake recurrence Tsunami Tectonics Á Á Á Á 1 Introduction The convergence between the Eurasian and Arabian plates has resulted in nearly 1,000- km-long Makran subduction zone, located in the northern Arabian Sea (Fig. 1a). Con- fined between two regions of active continent–continent collision (the Zagros and the Himalaya), the Makran subduction zone is bordered on the east by the left-lateral Ornach Nal fault and on the west by the right-lateral Minab–Zendan fault (Fig. 1a, b). Sub- duction of the oceanic crust has been occurring along the north-dipping plane since Early Cretaceous (White and Ross 1979; Platt et al. 1985). This subduction zone has a thick sediment pile, estimated as *7 km, thus forming one of the largest accretionary wedges in the world (Kopp et al. 2000; Kukowski et al. 2000). Much of the 500-km-wide sedimentary wedge is exposed in the onshore parts of Pakistan and Iran (Schlu¨ter et al. 2002; Kukowski et al. 2001). The Mw 8.1, 1945 earthquake, sourced on the eastern segment of the Makran, is the only instrumentally recorded great earthquake from this region. Compared with most other subduction zones, this region has generated fewer earthquakes since historical times, and this seems to be especially true for its western half. The apparent aseismicity on the western Makran and its potential as a source for future great tsunamigenic earthquakes have been a subject of debate. There seem to be three possibilities: one, the entire western segment is mostly deforming aseismically (Bayer et al. 2006); two, the subduction process is no longer active on this segment (Vita-Finzi 2002; McCall 2002); and three, the western segment is locked and is capable of generating a plate boundary earthquake (Byrne et al. 1992; Mokthari et al. 2008; Musson 2009). The last assumption is based on the fact that the coast on the western part appears to have been uplifted as shown by a terraced topography and that the plate convergence also shows a more or less uniform velocity (*23 mm year-1, relative to Eurasia), evidenced by GPS measurements (Masson et al. 2007). The perceived locked status of the western segment and its unknown tsunamigenic potential has important implications on the hazard and risk assessment for the North Arabian shores (e.g., Wyss and Al-Homoud 2004). Yet another possibility is that the entire Makran subduction zone (both the eastern and western segments) can rupture as a single block, as exemplified by the 2004 Andaman-Sumatra earthquake. In this paper, we will restrict our discussion only to the question whether the western Makran has the potential to generate large earthquakes. 1.1 Background 1.1.1 Case for two segments The entire Makran subduction zone was initially considered to be structurally homoge- neous and consequently deforming uniformly (Byrne et al. 1992). It has been suggested 123 Nat Hazards Fig. 1 a Tectonic features around the Makran subduction zone (MAF Makran accretionary front, SF Sonne fault, MZF Minab–Zendan fault, ONF Ornach Nal fault, OFZ Owen fault zone, OMP Ormara microplate, DT Dalrymple trough, MR Murray ridge, LMR little Murray ridge, EM Eastern Makran, WM: Western Makran). White arrow denotes direction of plate motion NW–SE trending; arrows indicate the trend of a possible active transverse fault coincident with the suture zone of the Lut Block and Helmand Block (two Pre-Eocene accreted terrains). Inset A map of the region showing the study area. b. Structural elements of the region encompassing the North Arabian Sea. Abbreviations: AP accretionary prism, MAF Makran accretionary front, LMR little Murray ridge, OP Ormara microplate, WM western segment, EM eastern segment. Solid arrows show GPS horizontal velocities for JASK, CHAB, MUSC sites (Vernant et al. 2004) that the large amount of unconsolidated and water-saturated overpressured sediments may result in a low apparent friction on the detachment—a reason for relative aseismicity of the western Makran (Byrne et al. 1992; Bayer et al. 2006; Pacheco et al. 1993; Bilek and Lay 123 Nat Hazards 2002). There are some compelling structural and geometrical considerations that suggest the segmented nature of the Makran tectonic province. Segmentation is implied by the existence of the Sonne fault, the NW-trending, left- lateral strike-slip fault, whose offshore extension is traced from swath bathymetry surveys (Kukowski et al. 2000). The apparent geometrical considerations, therefore, suggest that the Sonne fault possibly divides the Makran subduction front into western and eastern segments (Fig. 1b). The patterns of seismicity and the structural setting of the Murray Ridge suggest a separate microplate on the eastern part of the subduction zone (called Ormara microplate). This triangular-shaped microplate occurs between the NNW-trending left-lateral Sonne fault on the western side and NNE-trending Ornach Nal fault on the eastern side (Kukowski et al. 2000). The Sonne fault accommodates the differential movement between the Ormara microplate (driven northward by the Murray Ridge) and the Gulf of Oman (driven by the Sheba Ridge). The Sonne fault makes such a distinctive boundary that a single event, breaking through both the segments of Makran, is considered improbable (Musson 2009). Aside from the presence of a transverse bounding structure, strength contrast of mid-level de´collement between the eastern and western Makran has also been inferred (Byrne et al. 1992) that might inhibit a segment breaking full rupture. Seismicity, GPS and offshore morphology data suggest that the eastern and the western Makran segments have distinctive characteristics. Recent efforts have generated an extensive GPS database for the Zagros–Makran zone (Vernant et al.