Seismic history of western Anatolia during the last 16 kyr determined by cosmogenic ³⁶Cl dating

Western Anatolia is one of the most seismically active regions worldwide. To date, the paleoseismic history of many major faults, in terms of recurrence intervals of destructive earthquakes, their magnitude, displacement, and slip rates is poorly understood. Regional crustal extension has produced major horst-graben systems bounded by kilometer-scale normal faults locally in carbonates, along which vertical crustal displacements occurred. In this study, we explore the seismic history of western Anatolia using ³⁶Cl exposure dating through study of well-preserved carbonate normal fault scarps. To accomplish this, ³⁶Cl concentrations in 214 samples from fault plane transects on the Rahmiye and Ören fault scarps were measured and compared with existing ³⁶Cl measurements of 370 samples on five fault scraps in western Anatolia. At least 20 seismic events have been reconstructed over the past 16 kyr. The age correlation of the seismic events implies four phases of high seismic activity in western Anatolia, at around 2, 4, 6, and 8 ka. Slips are modeled ranging between 0.6 to 4.2 m per seismic event, but are probably the result of clustered earthquakes of maximum magnitude 6.5 to 7.1. While the average slip rates have values of 0.3 to 1.9 mm/yr, incremental slip rates of the faults range greater than 0.1 to 2.2 mm/yr, showing more activity mostly through late Holocene. Our finding reveals high capability of cosmogenic ³⁶Cl dating to explore seismic behavior of active faults beyond the existing earthquake records.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s00015-022-00408-x.