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Seismotectonics of the Zagros Foredeep Fault (ZFF), NE Arabian plate

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Abstract

Zagros Foredeep Fault (ZFF) is located to the northeast of the Arabian plate and represents a discontinuous line that extends from southern Iran, through Iraqi territories to northeastern Syria. This research aims to study the seismotectonics of the Zagros Foredeep Fault at the collision zone between the Arabian and Eurasian plates. The results show that fifteen earthquake sequences have occurred on the Zagros Foredeep Fault. One of these sequences consists of more than 200 earthquakes in one month (April 2021). The study of the stress regime and the focal mechanism solutions in the Zagros Foredeep Fault shows that the fault has a reverse movement in most parts of it and a strike-slip at the northwestern part of it. Zagros Foredeep Fault was displaced by two strike-slip faults in Khuzestan that are extended from Basrah transversal basement faults. The mechanism of the Abdul-Aziz fault in Syria is a strike-slip with normal movement, which reveals that this fault is not a part of the Zagros Foredeep Fault. The authors believe that the Zagros fault formed in the Late Triassic period as a normal fault and reactivated with reverse movement in the Tertiary period during the collision between the Arabian-Eurasian plates.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Seismological Laboratory of the University of Basrah (SLUB) and the Iranian Seismological Center (IRSC) for providing the needed data that was used in this research. Also, we are grateful to the International Seismological Center (ISC), European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), Global Centroid Moment Tensor (GCMT), and World Stress Map (WSM) project for earthquake catalogs, focal mechanism solutions, and stress map of the study area. We also like to thank Robert Herrmann of the SLU for the CPS software package and Wessel et al. (2019) for the GMT 6.

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  1. Seismological Laboratory of University of Basrah (SLUB), Department of Geology, College of Science, University of Basrah, Basrah, Iraq

    Muntadher Al-Kaabi & Wathiq Abdulnaby

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  1. Muntadher Al-Kaabi
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  2. Wathiq Abdulnaby
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Correspondence to Muntadher Al-Kaabi.

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Responsible Editor: Longjun Dong

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Al-Kaabi, M., Abdulnaby, W. Seismotectonics of the Zagros Foredeep Fault (ZFF), NE Arabian plate. Arab J Geosci 15, 1211 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-022-10448-0

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