Coseismic deformation of the 1976 Ms7.3 Chaldiran earthquake in eastern Turkey measured by satellite imagery, in comparison with field measurements

Abstract

Large continental earthquakes are infrequent, but they are important for understanding active tectonics. Many pre-1990, magnitude greater than 7 earthquakes have not been well documented due to a lack of data. The declassification of KeyHole (KH) imagery provides opportunities for investigating those historical events. In this study, we present new geodetic observations of surface deformation from the 1976 November 24 Ms 7.3 Chaldiran earthquake in eastern Turkey. We use various historical KH imagery and modern Pleiades stereo imagery to determine the coseismic deformation, providing new constraints on the 1976 rupture. Based on the image measurements, we resolve the coseismic slip at depth. The inverted slip from a simple elastic dislocation model, ∼4.0 m at shallow depth of the Hidirmentes segment, is larger than the surface displacement, around 3 m from previous field surveys, suggesting that the coseismic deformation is a combination of slip on the primary fault with 30 ± 16 per cent off-fault deformation. We also measure cumulative offsets at two sites with well-preserved features, and find a constant ratio of horizontal to vertical offsets throughout the past few earthquake cycles. Both the observed constant slip ratio in this study and offset clusters from previous field measurements support that the Chaldiran fault exhibits a characteristic slip behaviour in the late Quaternary. By combining all the geodetic and geological observations in the broader region, we also present a brief analysis of the slip rate of the Chaldiran fault.