Identification of active areas of earthquake by thermal remote sensing

Abstract

The study investigates the ability of thermal remote sensing in identification of seismic active areas. The thermal characteristics of Land Surface Temperature (LST) represent changes before strong earthquakes. The objective of this research is to find the relationship between earthquake active areas and thermal properties of earth surface. Landsat ETM+ images and earthquake points from USGS have been used as the material of the study. LST have been calculated by the image data and magnitudes of earthquake activity have been interpolated by the seismic point data. The study has found that the areas with higher LST values in long period have more seismic activity on central Alborz Mountain Range in Iran and that the areas along the major faults also have higher LST values.