Fig. 1 Tectonic setting of the Dead Sea Fault. (A) Dead Sea Fault is a sinistral boundary between the African and Arabian plates (43). (B) Major active faults (43, 44) along the plate boundary, Dead Sea Transform; in this area, the fault is composed of four fault segments. The red star marks the drilling site; the black points mark places referred to in the study; the magenta triangles indicate historic and instrumental Mw ≥ 6.0 earthquakes near the drilling site (45). (C) The gray bars represent the fault rupture of historic Mw ≥ 7.0 earthquakes since 31 BCE (34, 36) that occurred along the focused part of the fault—the central Dead Sea Fault (up to 150 km north and south of the drilling site).
Fig. 2 Paleoearthquake indicators in the ICDP Core 5017-1. (A to J) In situ folded layers; (A and B) linear waves, (C to F) asymmetric billows, and (G to J) coherent vortices. (K to M) Intraclast breccia layers. The vertical light blue bars indicate the position of events. Core depth: (A) 11,010.0 to 11,012.0 cm; (B) 16,604.0 to 16,608.0 cm; (C) 10,929.9 to 10,932.4 cm; (D) 26,582.7 to 26,585.2 cm; (E) 32,861.0 to 32,862.5 cm; (F) 35,921.8 to 35,923.8 cm; (G) 13,754.4 to 13,758.0 cm; (H) 10,605.4 to 10,606.9 cm; (I) 36,425.9 to 36,427.9 cm; (J) 12,528.0 to 12,532.0 cm; (K) 14,492.5 to 14,500.0 cm; (L) 39,206.4 to 39,210.4 cm; and (M) 10,772.0 to 10,787.0 cm.
Fig. 3 Numerical simulation on in situ folded layer and intraclast breccia structures in the Dead Sea sedimentary sequences. (A) Typical structures from Dead Sea depocenter Core 5017-1. (B) Typical structures from Dead Sea onshore outcrops (Fig. 1B). (C) Schematic diagrams based on snapshots from the numerical simulations demonstrating the four structures. (D) Quantitative estimation of the accelerations that are needed to initiate the four structures with different thicknesses; the deformations normally occurred when Richardson number ≤ 0.125.
Fig. 4 Return time statistics of seismites and magnitude constraint for strong seismic shaking events during the past 220 ka. (A) Temporal distribution of moderate (PGA ≥ 0.13g) and strong (PGA ≥ 0.34g) seismic shaking events. (B and C) Histograms for return times of PGA ≥ 0.13g and PGA ≥ 0.34g events. We plot two distribution types (exponential and power-law) for each dataset. (D) Normalized return time data to show return time distribution of moderate and strong seismic shaking events. (E) Magnitude constraint for strong seismic shaking events by applying the three regional empirical attenuation relations (28–31), taking the past 2-ka earthquake scenario as an analogy for the paleoseismic record, and assuming that most Mw ≥ 6.0 earthquakes occurred with D ≥ 30 km from the drilling site (see the text for details); D, epicentral distance. (F) Comparison of different temporal distributions of large earthquakes on the central Dead Sea Fault Zone derived from three different geological records. (G) Magnitude-frequency distribution of modern (33) (olive colored) and paleoearthquakes (pink colored) on the central Dead Sea Fault during the past 220 ka; the number of modern earthquakes (fig. S5) is extrapolated to 220 ka.
Fig. 5 Recurrence pattern of large earthquakes (Mw ≥ 7.0) on the slow-slipping plate boundary during the past 220 ka. (A) Histograms for recurrence times of Mw ≥ 7.0 events in the paleoseismic record of Begin et al. (19). (B) Histograms for recurrence times of Mw ~ 8.0 events in the paleoseismic record of Kagan et al. (21). (C) Histograms for recurrence times in the integrated 220-ka-long Mw ≥ 7.0 record. (D) Normalized recurrence data for the three datasets for comparison.
- Table 1 Statistical analysis of recurrence times for the referred records.
Paleoseismic
record of (19)Paleoseismic
record of (21)PGA ≥ 0.13g (MMI
≥ VI½) events (this
study)PGA ≥ 0.34g (MMI
≥ VIII) events (this
study)Integrated Mw ≥
7.0 record (this
study)Lower-bound magnitude (Mmin) 7.0 8.0 5.3 7.0 7.0 Time period Past 60 ka Past 185 ka Past 220 ka Past 220 ka Past 220 ka Number of events 13 26 413 139 151 SD (year) 4800 4600 900 2200 2000 SEM (year) 1500 1000 40 190 160 Mean return time (year) 4600 ± 1500 6900 ± 1000 530 ± 40 1500 ± 190 1400 ± 160 COV 1.05 0.67 1.65 1.49 1.43 Fitting of return time
distribution (R2)Weibull – 0.97 – – – Exponential 0.01 0.85 0.72 0.63 0.66 Power-law 0.14 0.59 0.93 0.88 0.89 The best fit to the distribution – (Fig. 5A) Weibull (Fig. 5B);
y = 0.18x0.7e(−0.03*x^1.7)Power-law (Fig. 4B);
y = 0.03x−1.5Power-law (Fig. 4C);
y = 0.14x−1.2Power-law (Fig. 5C);
y = 0.15x−1.3Earthquake recurrence pattern Random Quasi-periodic Clustered Fault behavior model – – The group-fault temporal clustering model
Supplementary Materials
Supplementary material for this article is available at http://advances.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/6/48/eaba4170/DC1
Additional Files
Supplementary Materials
A 220,000-year-long continuous large earthquake record on a slow-slipping plate boundary
Yin Lu, Nadav Wetzler, Nicolas Waldmann, Amotz Agnon, Glenn P. Biasi, Shmuel Marco
This PDF file includes:
- Figs. S1 to S5
- Tables S1 to S5
Files in this Data Supplement:
