Stress tensor and focal mechanisms along the Dead Sea fault and related structural elements based on seismological data

Abstract

The Dead Sea fault is among the largest active strike–slip fault of the world. This study is focused on the southern part of this fault, from the Sea of Galilee to the Gulf of Aqaba, as monitored mainly by the Jordanian and Israeli seismic networks. The data of arrival times and polarities allowed relocation of earthquakes with a better azimuthal coverage and computation of focal mechanisms. This last step has been realized by inverting the polarities to determine a unique stress tensor for the region and the compatible focal mechanisms. Inversion with different subsets of the data set, based on tectonic regionalization, has also been performed to evaluate the impact of each cluster of earthquakes on the global solution. The population of focal mechanisms is clearly dominated by strike–slip events, with the notable exception of a cluster of earthquakes, south of the Dead Sea, which displays several normal focal mechanisms. This last cluster forces σ 1 to be vertical and σ 2 to be horizontal. A large number of fault planes, however, are close to the vertical, inhibiting the action of the vertical component of the stress tensor, and acting like under strike–slip stress regime. We observed a good agreement between the location of the earthquakes and the active faults, based on geological data. In addition, there is a good agreement between the fault plane solutions and the orientation of the active faults.