COMSHELFRISKS: Promoting a Combined Approach to Investigating Risks of Earthquakes, Landslides, and Tsunamis in Coastal, Shelf, and Continental Slope Areas

For the Scientist

The northeastern and northern boundaries of the EBS are of convergent type, characterized by underthrusting of the Shatsky Rise (a massive crustal block on the NE periphery of the EBS) belov the Caucasian and Crimean fold/thrust belts respectively. Deformation is accompanied by strong seismicity localized in a prominent belt roughly parallel to the Black Sea cost (Fig.2).

Fig. 2. Seismicity of the Eastern Black Sea region.
(After B.G. Pustovitenko, unpubl.) For major earthquakes (7<M<8) the size of the epicentral area is shown.

The highest registred magnitudes are of 6.4 – 6.5 order while a limited number of focal mechanism solutions show the predomination of the thrust or thrust/strike-slip motion. In particular, mechanisms of the earthquakes on the Caucasus coast display a prominent dexstral slip component (Fig.3).

Fig. 3. Focal mechanism solutions for the earthquakes of the Caucasus front (After Vardapetyan, 1981) 1 ­ nappe front; 2 - strike-slip fault; 3 ­ focal mechanism; 4 ­ foredeep; 5 ­ vector of the EBS microplate motion relative to Eurasia.

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