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Seismic imaging of the lithospheric structure of the Zagros mountain belt (Iran).

International audienceMeasurements on either side of the Kazerun fault system in the Zagros Mountain Belt, Iran, show that the accommodation of the convergence of the Arabian and Eurasian Plates differs across the region. In northwest Zagros, the deformation is partitioned as 3–6 mm yr−1 of shortening perpendicular to the axis of the mountain belt, and 4–6 mm yr−1 of dextral strike-slip motion on northwest–southeast trending faults. No individual strike-slip fault seems to slip at a rate higher than ~2 mm yr−1. In southeast Zagros, the deformation is pure shortening of 8 ± 2 mm yr−1 occurring perpendicular to the simple folded belt and restricted to the Persian Gulf shore. The fact that most of the deformation is located in front of the simple folded belt, close to the Persian Gulf, while seismicity is more widely spread across the mountain belt, confirms the decoupling of the surface sedimentary layers from the seismogenic basement. A comparison with the folding and topography corroborates a southwestward propagation of the surface deformation. The difference in deformation between the two regions suggests that right-lateral shear cumulates on the north–south trending Kazerun strike-slip fault system to 6 ± 2 mm yr−1

S U M M A R YMicroearthquakes in Central Zagros, recorded for 7 weeks in 1997, lie in a ∼6-8 km zone that is likely located beneath 11 km of sediments. They are not located on an active décollement between the sediments and the crystalline crust, but rather define a pattern of NNW-SSE trending lineaments parallel to the fold axes observed at the surface. The spacing between the seismic lineaments is ∼15-20 km and therefore different from that between the folds (∼10-15 km), which suggests that there is not a simple relationship between the two. Focal mechanisms and precise relative locations are consistent with NW-SE striking reverse faulting connected by NNW-SSE striking right lateral strike-slip faults. The dip of the reverse faults is not certain but is likely NE for the northernmost faults. The strain pattern deduced from the P-axes is remarkably similar to the shortening deduced from GPS-based geodesy suggesting that microearthquakes are the response of the prefractured brittle crust to strain rather than localized on single active faults.