The Aegean region is one of the most seismically active regions in Turkey and comprises the Hellenic Arc, Greece, and Western Turkey. The Tuzla Fault, which lies between the town of Menderes and Cape Doğanbey, is one of the major seismic threats in western Turkey due to its seismic potential to generate a major earthquake (M 6, near Doğanbey Cape in 1992) and proximity to the city of İzmir which sustained damage due to the earthquake that occurred in the Aegean Sea on October 30th, 2020. In order to estimate strain rates and seismic potential around the Tuzla Fault, five global positioning system (GPS) surveys were carried out between 2009 and 2012. | Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences Turkish J Earth Sci 2021 30 449-459 http earth TÜBİTAK Research Article doi yer-2009-9 Investigation of strain accumulation along Tuzla fault western Turkey Emre HAVAZLI Haluk ÖZENER Department of Geodesy Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute KOERI Boğaziçi University İstanbul Turkey Received Accepted Published Online Final Version Abstract The Aegean region is one of the most seismically active regions in Turkey and comprises the Hellenic Arc Greece and Western Turkey. The Tuzla Fault which lies between the town of Menderes and Cape Doğanbey is one of the major seismic threats in western Turkey due to its seismic potential to generate a major earthquake M 6 near Doğanbey Cape in 1992 and proximity to the city of İzmir which sustained damage due to the earthquake that occurred in the Aegean Sea on October 30th 2020. In order to estimate strain rates and seismic potential around the Tuzla Fault five global positioning system GPS surveys were carried out between 2009 and 2012. Estimated GPS velocities in the study area exceed 20 mm year which is in line with previous studies. We use two different approaches to calculate the strain accumulation on and around the Tuzla Fault. The first method adopts forming triangles using the GPS sites as corners and calculating strain rates within those triangles. The second method adopts a bicubic interpolation approach described by Holt and Haines 1993. Maximum values of strain accumulation were found to reach up to 200 nanostrain year. Key words Tuzla Fault-İzmir Aegean tectonics strain rate global positioning system GPS velocity field 1. Introduction for individual faults. It is important to study individual The Aegean Region is located within the convergent faults and estimate their deformation characteristics to be boundary between the African and Eurasian plates. Since able to resolve complex deformation .
