6 February 2023 Mw 7.8 Pazarcık (Kahramanmaraş) Earthquake: the rupture geometry and slip distribution

6 February 2023 Mw 7.8 Pazarcık (Kahramanmaraş) Earthquake generated about a 300 km-long surface rupture between the Antakya airport to the south and the Karaköse and Yarpuzlu villages (Sincik, Adıyaman) to the north and strong ground motions, resulting in extensive property damage and loss of lives. We rapidly started to document the deformation structures on the surface by the second day of the event, spreading into smaller mapping teams and covering nearly the entire rupture zone. In addition to walking the rupture and recording locations with GPS waypoints, we made surface offset measurements with a standard tape measure. We used several sUAS’ to acquire high-resolution Digital Orthophoto Maps and Digital Surface Models (between 3 to 5 cm pixel resolution) to map the coseismic slip and surface rupture zone details. We utilized high resolution stereo aerial images with 10 or 30 cm ground pixel resolution, collected by the General Directorate of Mapping, in areas where we could not collect high-quality sUAS imagery.

This poster presentation aims to show the full extent of our field and sUAS-based rupture map and horizontal slip measurements of the Pazarcık Earthquake. At the most southern section, the rupture along the Hatay Rift is ~115 km long with a maximum sinistral offset of about 4.5 m between Nurdağ and Şekeroba towns. Between Türkoğlu and Gölbaşı, the rupture is 85 km long and the maximum slip reaches up to ~7m to the north of the Pazarcık town, close to the junction of the East Anatolian and Narlı faults. Farther to the NE, between Gölbaşı and Çelikhan, the slip first decreases to a mean value of ~2.5 m, but then it increases again to ~6.5 m at Kurucaova village. This section of the fault zone is nearly one km wide and is characterized by numerous sub-parallel surface breaks. To the north east of Çelikhan, the slip drops to less than one meter. It diminishes to the north of the Karaköse village (Sincik, Adıyaman), leaving of about 20 km-long unbroken fault section at the surface until the southwest termination of the 2020 Mw 6.8 Sivrice Earthquake rupture.