Changes in stress pattern around epicentral region of Bhuj earthquake of 26 January 2001

Abstract

The 26 January 2001 Bhuj earthquake (Mw 7.6) was one of the deadly Indian earthquakes that took about 20,000 lives. The region was seismically quite in the last 50 years. In the present paper, we have made efforts to understand the general nature of stress field and also spatial and temporal stress field around Bhuj prior and after the earthquake by analyzing lineaments extracted from remote sensing data. Our results demonstrate N to NE orientation of stress showing a high level of correlation between the SHmax deduced from the lineament and earthquake focal mechanism. The present results show the use of lineaments derived from remote sensing data in the evaluation of seismic hazards of any region and will be useful in updating world stress map. Copyright 2005 by the American Geophysical Union.