Kahramanmaraş - Gaziantep Türkiye M7.7 Earthquake, 6 February 2023 (04:17 GMT+03:00) Large historical earthquakes of the earthquake-affected region: a preliminary report

Abstract

The region where the 2023 February 6 earthquakes took place is known to have been very active in the past; it is part of the contact between the Eurasian and the Arabic plate, an area where seismic activity was relatively low in the 20th century (Figure 1). It is a “border zone” also from the historical point of view; therefore, although many earthquakes are known to most earthquake catalogues and compilations, the relevant information is often rather poor and affected by chronological and place-names problems. As a consequence, earthquake parameters given in the catalogues are often based on a poor dataset; the situation is even more complicated by chronological issues and careless compilations, which lead to earthquake duplications. In the frame of a larger investigation effort underway (Sesetyan et al., 2020; Stucchi et al. 2022) we first considered the available information from the main earthquake catalogues and compilations in the time-window 1000-1900. The volume by Ambraseys (2009) summarizes and sometimes updates the knowledge already proposed in previous works such as Ambraseys and Jackson (1988), Ambraseys (1989), Ambraseys and Finkel (1995). We also considered the works by Soysal et al. (1981), Guidoboni et al. (2019), Sbeinati et al. (2005), some recent historical earthquake investigations and the parametric catalogues by Shebalin and Tatevossian (1997), Tan et al. (2008), Sesetyan et al. (2013). Next, we assessed - when possible - macroseismic intensities at the mentioned localities and, from them, we assessed earthquake parameters by making use of the so-called “Boxer” method by Gasperini et al. (1999). For some of the main earthquakes in the region we briefly summarise here the earthquake parameters from our investigation and from the main catalogues. In the Appendix we summarise the available information.