Project description
Understanding how stress and strain accumulate through the earthquake cycle is of fundamental importance for understanding how, why and where earthquakes occur and therefore accurately estimating the resulting seismic hazard. In Turkey, the North Anatolian fault has been the focus of numerous studies over the past few decades. However, the Western Anatolian Extensional Province (Western Turkey) has had limited investigations despite recent (eg 2017 Bodrum earthquake, 1970 Gediz earthquake) and historical earthquakes, and thus the potential of future large damaging earthquakes is poorly known. The normal faults that accommodate this extension are arranged as a series of east-west orientated grabens, but it is unknown how these faults work together to take up the extension rate of ~10 – 15 mm/yr across the region over long and short timescales.
This project will investigate the relationship between fault geometry, long- and short-term slip rates and the accumulation of stress and strain across faults. To address this challenge will require integrating field observations of normal faults, historical records of earthquakes, numerical modelling of static stress and geodesy (InSAR and GPS). These data sets will give a better understanding of how strain is accommodated across multiple faults and how the evolution of stress and strain may affect fault interaction. The work will have implications for quantifying the seismic hazard in this region, which is typically understudied in comparison to the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey. Training will be provided in fieldwork for studying active tectonics, InSAR/GPS processing and Matlab/Python coding.
The closing date for applications is 12 noon on 30 April 2020. Shortlisted candidates will be invited for a virtual interview in the week starting 25 May 2020. We regret that we may not be able to respond to all applications. Applicants who have not received an offer of a place by early June should consider their application has been unsuccessful on this occasion.