Kinematics of North Anatolian Fault Under the Constrain of New GNSS Velocity Field

North Anatolian Fault (NAF) is one of the most important transform faults over in World. NAF produced an important earthquake sequence Mw ≥ 7 in the 20^th century, that migrates westward between 1939 and 1999. The earthquake sequence has broke the great part of the NAF which is approximately 1000 km. Due to this seismic activity of NAF, it is important to keep strain accumulation up to date and use the recent data. Many precious works have been studied to clarify the kinematics of NAF using the data that collected with geodetic methods (terrestrial and space geodetic).

In this study, we compiled published GNSS data and analyzed it to understand the present strain accumulation of NAF, with TDEFNODE block modelling code using a simple block geometry. The study area extends between Sapanca Lake at the west (Sakarya) to Yedisu at the east (Bingöl) and it stretches out in the north-south direction from the north coast of Blacksea to 130 kilometers south.

The 90% of GNSS velocity field have RMS values less than 2 mm and the accuracy of estimated slip rates is increased. Additionally, with the dense station distributions in the near field, spatial resolution improved, dramatically.

According to the first order results, fault slip rates are estimated as 20.5 mm/yr at the east and 21.6 mm/yr at the west. Locking depth is also estimated as 15 km at the east while the middle and the west part of the study area has shallower locking depth values.

In the presentation, we will demonstrate the power of our new GNSS velocity field and discuss its contribution to the understanding of the NAF kinematics in detail.

keywords: North Anatolian Fault, Block Modelling, Velocity Field