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Seismic slip rates in the Mediterranean and Middle East

Abstract

VARIOUS plate tectonic models have been suggested for the Mediterranean and Middle East1–3. These differ in detail, but all require several smaller plates to account for the complicated seismicity observed, a simple interaction between the African, Arabian and Eurasian plates being insufficient for this purpose. It has been pointed out4,5 that recent developments in the theory of earthquake mechanism, most notably the concept of seismic moment6, enable determinations of the extent to which interactions between plates affect the rates of seismicity along their boundaries. Use of earthquake catalogues for the first half of this century7,8 may be combined with a magnitude–moment relation to extend the relatively short time interval for which reliable measurements of moment can be made (the last 10–15 yr), though such studies are necessarily subject to considerable error.

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NORTH, R. Seismic slip rates in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Nature 252, 560–563 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1038/252560a0

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