The Dahuiyeh (Zarand) earthquake of 2005 February 22 in central Iran: reactivation of an intramountain reverse fault

Abstract

We used seismic body waves, radar interferometry and field investigation to examine the source processes of the destructive earthquake of 2005 February 22 near Zarand, in south–central Iran. The earthquake ruptured an intramountain reverse fault, striking E–W and dipping north at ∼60° to a depth of about 10 km. It produced a series of coseismic scarps with up to 1 m vertical displacement over a total distance of ∼13 km, continuous for 7 km. The line of the coseismic ruptures followed a known geological fault of unknown, but probably pre-Late Cenozoic, age and involved bedding-plane slip where the scarps were continuous at the surface. However, any signs of earlier coseismic ruptures along this fault had been obliterated by the time of the 2005 earthquake, probably by land sliding and weathering, so that the fault could not reasonably have been identified as active beforehand. The 2005 fault is at an oblique angle to the range-bounding Kuh Banan strike-slip fault, and may represent a splay from that fault, related to its southern termination. Other intramountain reverse faulting earthquakes have occurred in Iran, but this is the first to have produced a clear, mapped surface rupture, and to have been studied with InSAR. Faults of this type represent a serious seismic hazard in Iran and are difficult to assess, because their geomorphological expression is much less clear than the range-bounding reverse faults, which are more common and have been better studied.