Abstract
In this study, we determine the stress release from the 2003 Bam earthquake (Mw 6.6) by applying the stress inversion technique to focal mechanisms of 199 aftershocks. There is no evidence of significant surface faulting that can be used to study the faulting pattern of the Bam fault zone. Therefore, we applied two independent methods for identifying the faulting pattern in this zone: the instability criterion based on the analysis of orientations of nodal planes of focal mechanisms with respect to the regional stress, and the Fry method based on the analysis of spatial clustering of aftershock foci. The results show that the fault associated with the 2003 Bam earthquake is well oriented for shearing under the present-day regional stress. We identified four sets of faults with a close angular relation to the maximum horizontal compression (SHmax) that have been (re)activated. These faults include strike-slip (right lateral and left lateral), thrust, and normal faults that are oriented approximately oblique, perpendicular, and parallel relative to the SHmax, respectively. The direction of the SHmax is N31° E. Based on the results, we propose to apply the instability criterion and the Fry method to seismic data as two valuable and independent techniques in order to constrain the kinematic and active faulting in the area.
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Plotting of the focal mechanism of earthquakes on the Frohlich’s diagram was performed by Orient software developed by Vollmer (2015) (https://www.frederickvollmer.com/orient/index.html). The Fry method (Fry, 1979) was performed by SpaDIS software developed by Vearncombe and Vearncombe (1999) (https://www.sjsresource.com.au). The inversion for stress was performed with open-public Matlab code STRESSINVERSE (https://www.ig.cas.cz/stress-inverse).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful reviews. We thank Dr. M. Tatar for kindly providing the aftershock data of 2003 Bam earthquake and his helpful comments and suggestions. The work was partly supported by the Czech Science Foundation, grant No. 22-10747S.
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Ahad Nouri: Conception and design of study, Data collection, Software, Interpretation, Writing/drafting/editing. Behnam Rahimi: Conception and design of study, Interpretation, Reading/editing the manuscript. Václav Vavryčuk: Interpretation, Reading/editing the manuscript. Hossein Sadeghi: Acquisition of a part of data, Reading/editing the manuscript.
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Nouri, A., Rahimi, B., Vavryčuk, V. et al. Stress and Faulting Pattern in the Bam Region, SE Iran, Detected by Fault Instability Criterion and Fry Method. Pure Appl. Geophys. 181, 219–231 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-023-03398-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-023-03398-5