TITLE:
Earthquake Hazard Zonation and Seismotectonics of the Bandar Abbas Area, Zagros, Iran
AUTHORS:
Saeedeh Abdolizadeh, Zahra Maleki, Mehran Arian
KEYWORDS:
Zagros, Bandar Abbas, Earthquake Hazard, Zonation, Active Faults
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Geology,
Vol.6 No.3,
March
30,
2016
ABSTRACT: The study area (Bandar Abbas area) is
located in the Zagros fold-thrust belt as part of the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic
belt as seismically active belt. This area is located between the Makran
accretionary prism and Oman Mountains from east and the Zagros collision belt
from west as transition zone. The Zagros fold-thrust belt from the viewpoint of
seismicity, is very active and Iran’s major earthquake-prone area. The study
area has main active faults and some high magnitude earthquakes occurred in
current century. Because the Bandar Abbas area has high seismic activity, the
main goal of this research is prepared to earthquake hazard zonation and identify
hazardous seismic zones, based on Decision Support System method for define
active seismotectonic in this area. The seismotectonic study has been done in
30 - 100 km radius, for Bandar Abbas area. In this research, we used Decision
Support System method by in corporate and combine essential data such as
seismic data from 1900-2015, Digital Elevation Model of the study area (DEM),
surface geology, seismicity parameters, soil classification and location main
faults. In this research the Decision Support System (DSS) base on GIS database
is used for calculate seismicity parameters. Based on the relative risk of
earthquake zonation map, the Bandar Abbas area is located from the north to the
East and from the South to the East, in area with high seismic risk (with
Orange color). Some small regions with very high relative seismic risk have
been limited to these areas with high risk. Also from north to west and from
south to west “the study area” is located mainly in the area with earthquake
relative risk of in areas with moderate and low relative risk of earthquakes.
In the far southwestern region of the study, the small area is located in an
area with high and very high seismic relative risk and this case may be due to
the activity of the Mountain Front Fault (MFF) and Zagros Fore deep Fault
(ZFF). Finally, the study area has been affected by active faults and it causes
high vulnerability of the study area in the face of a possible occurrence of
earthquakes. Based on of Seismotectonic investigations, there are existed minor
faults of the Zagros fault from East to West and in the middle part. This case
has been caused some parts in the study area with low and moderate seismic risk
to be considered in the face of possible earthquakes and seismic damages, as an
area with high seismic risk.