The June 2022 Khost earthquake in southeastern Afghanistan: A complicated shallow slip event revealed with InSAR

Abstract

On June 22, 2022, the Mw6.2 earthquake in southeastern Afghanistan caused a severe disaster. We used the Sentinel-1A ascending and descending track images of the European Space Agency and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) to obtain the coseismic surface deformation field of the earthquake, which showed that the earthquake caused complex ruptures of multiple faults and various types. Using the dislocation model of the elastic half-space, we determined the focal parameters and slip distribution on the fault plane of this event. The results reveal that: (1) the seismogenic fault of this event is an unknown fault on the northeastern edge of the Katawaz microblock; (2) The slip on the fault plane is mainly in the range of 0–8 km along the dip, with maximum slips about 2 m at a depth of 2 km, which projected on the surface is 69.44°E, 32.96°N. This event suggests that, similar to the Chaman, Ghazaband and other large faults, the faults inside the microblock also play an important role in adjusting for the collision stress between India and Europe.