Seismic velocity structure along the North Anatolian Fault beneath the Central Marmara Sea and its implication for seismogenesis

Summary The offshore part of the North Anatolian Fault (NAF) beneath the Marmara Sea is a well-known seismic gap for future M > 7 earthquakes in the sense that more than 250 years have passed since the last major earthquake in the Central Marmara region. Although many studies discussed the seismic potential for the future large earthquake in this region on the basis of historical record, geodetic, and geological observations, it is difficult to evaluate the actual situation on the seismic activity and structure along the NAF beneath the Marmara Sea due to the lack of ocean bottom seismic observations. Using ocean bottom seismometer observations, an assessment of the location of possible asperities that could host an expected large earthquake is undertaken based on heterogeneities in the microseismicity distribution and seismic velocity structure. Specifically, seismic tomography and precise hypocenter estimations are conducted using offshore seismic data whose recording period is 11 months. About five times more microearthquakes are detected with respect to events recorded in a land-based catalog. A comparison with previously published results from offshore observation data suggests that the seismicity pattern had not changed from September 2014 to May 2017. The location accuracy of microearthquakes is greatly improved from only the land-based earthquake catalog, particularly for depth direction. There are several aseismic and inactive zones of microearthquake, and the largest one is detected using land-based seismic observation, whereas other zones are newly detected via offshore observations. The obtained velocity model shows a strong lateral contrast, with two changing points. The western changing point corresponds to a segmentation boundary, where the dip angle of the NAF segments changed. High-velocity zones from tomographic images are characterized by low seismicity eastward of the segment boundary. To the east of 28.50° E, the high-velocity zone becomes thicker in the depth direction and is characterized by low seismicity. Although the low seismic activity alone could be interpreted as both strong coupling and fully creeping, the high-velocity features at the same can be concluded that these zones are consist of brittle material and strong coupling. From comparison with other geodetic and seismic studies, we interpret these zones as locked zones that had been ruptured by the past large earthquakes and could be ruptured by future ones. These zones might accumulate strain since the mainshock rupture associated with the May 1766 Ms7.3 earthquake, the latest major earthquake in this region.