Location

Arlington, Virginia

Date

16 Aug 2008, 8:45am - 12:30pm

Abstract

A mega shallow depth earthquake originated from the Pakistan’s Kashmir Hazara Zone (KHZ). The KHZ under the context of regional surface and sub-surface geology displays a complex seismotectonic scenario. Its earthquake prone structures occur both exposed on the surface as major faults/folds and also at depth beneath the surface as mega crustal deformations. Former are visible and have been investigated geologically by mapping and their surface behaviour verified by various geophysical methods, whereas the deeper ones interpreted by the monitoring of seismotectonic events. The Kashmir-Hazara Syntaxis (KHS) is an anomalous folded structure which emanates from the Pir Panjal Range in Kashmir and extends northwards till Balakot where its western limb takes a loop to the southwest and extends with this trend towards Muzaffarabad. The Jhelum Thrust (JT) is a terminal branch of Main Boundary Thrust (MBT) and the recent shallow depth (16 km.), Mw = 7.7 earthquake of October 08, 2005 and aftershocks are located on the western limb of KHS and are the product of release of energy stored in this zone by the convergence of KHS. The earthquake moment ranged between 2 and 3 x 1027 dyne.cm and rupture time was ≈ 30 sec. The patch of the fault that slipped during the earthquake may be approximated by an ellipse of 50-70 km. length in the NW-SE direction and 20-30 km. wide in the transverse direction. The length of this patch is in fair agreement with the length of the fault along which significant surface deformation is observed in the field, from Balakot to the mountains south of Hattian.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Meeting Name

6th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Document Version

Final Version

Rights

© 2008 Missouri University of Science and Technology, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

File Type

text

Language

English

Download

Share

 
COinS
 
Aug 11th, 12:00 AM Aug 16th, 12:00 AM

Pakistan’s Kashmir-Hazara Zone and the October 08, 2005 Earthquake

Arlington, Virginia

A mega shallow depth earthquake originated from the Pakistan’s Kashmir Hazara Zone (KHZ). The KHZ under the context of regional surface and sub-surface geology displays a complex seismotectonic scenario. Its earthquake prone structures occur both exposed on the surface as major faults/folds and also at depth beneath the surface as mega crustal deformations. Former are visible and have been investigated geologically by mapping and their surface behaviour verified by various geophysical methods, whereas the deeper ones interpreted by the monitoring of seismotectonic events. The Kashmir-Hazara Syntaxis (KHS) is an anomalous folded structure which emanates from the Pir Panjal Range in Kashmir and extends northwards till Balakot where its western limb takes a loop to the southwest and extends with this trend towards Muzaffarabad. The Jhelum Thrust (JT) is a terminal branch of Main Boundary Thrust (MBT) and the recent shallow depth (16 km.), Mw = 7.7 earthquake of October 08, 2005 and aftershocks are located on the western limb of KHS and are the product of release of energy stored in this zone by the convergence of KHS. The earthquake moment ranged between 2 and 3 x 1027 dyne.cm and rupture time was ≈ 30 sec. The patch of the fault that slipped during the earthquake may be approximated by an ellipse of 50-70 km. length in the NW-SE direction and 20-30 km. wide in the transverse direction. The length of this patch is in fair agreement with the length of the fault along which significant surface deformation is observed in the field, from Balakot to the mountains south of Hattian.