Unveiling the Kinematics of the 2022 Düzce Earthquake (Mw 5.9) and Its Impact on Regional Tectonics

In 1999, The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) generated two destructive earthquakes, namely, the Mw 7.4 Izmit earthquake and the Mw 7.1 Düzce earthquake, in the western part of Türkiye and broke more than 180 km of NAF. After 22 years of silence, at the overlapping section of these ruptures,  the region produced two earthquakes: one with a magnitude of 5 and another, a year later, with a magnitude of 5.9. In this study, we aim to examine the role of these recent earthquakes in terms of slip deficit between two ruptures.

Our primary focus is on the Düzce earthquake (Mw 5.9) that occurred on 23 November 2022.  Here we use a novel method to reconstruct the coseismic deformation field by  enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) from ~3 years of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) Sentinel-1 TOPS data spanning the earthquake. We estimate a coseismic surface displacement of ~2 cm for this event.

Furthermore, data from the stations belonging to the Turkish National GNSS Network and data from eight new cGPS sites that we have established in the area have been processed to observe coseismic and postseismic displacement. Postseismic deformations are estimated for one month interval after the earthquake, maximum postseismic deformation is observed on the site named AKSU: 18.6 ± 2.18 mm at east and -1.5 ± 2.28 mm at north direction.

A joint inversion model was developed using the aforementioned geodetic and seismological data to estimate the region's final state and was linked to the potential slip deficit of previous major earthquakes in 1999.