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Earthquakes Affect Plate Movement in a Feedback Loop
An analysis of GPS data from the 1999 İzmit quake in Turkey finds the the quake changed the movement direction of the Anatolian Plate.
Earthquakes, it turns out, can affect the movement of the plates. I know what you’re thinking. Plate movement causes earthquakes, not the other way around, but according to new research published in the Geophysical Journal International, the reverse is also true.
Researchers studied and analyzed the GPS data from the 1999 İzmit earthquake in Turkey, which was an incredibly strong and deadly quake that measured magnitude 7.6 and lasted just under a minute. The quake occurred on the North Anatolian Fault, a strike-slip fault similar to the San Andreas in California, where two plates are slides past each other. Turkey rests on a microplate called the Anatolian Plate, which is squashed between the Eurasian Plate and the Arabian Plate and being moved to the west about 2–2.5 centimeters a year as a result. That western movement means the plate scrapes against the other two plates, and bam, earthquakes.
However, that huge quake in 1999 changed the direction of the Anatolian Plate, and that change also influenced how often quakes happen there. Lead author Juan Martin De Blas explains: As the…
