The massive earthquakes that hit Turkey on Monday triggered a massive change in the tectonic plates on which Turkey “sits” or lies, pushing the country to the west by as much as three metres, experts said.
- As a result, the turkey could have slipped and moved as much as five to six metres, Italian seismologist Dr. Carlo Doglione told the Italia 24 news website.
- He added that all of this depends on preliminary data, and more accurate information will be available from satellites in the coming days.
- Dr. Bob Holdsworth, a professor of geology at Britain’s Durham University, said the amount of plate movement might be quite logical given the strength of the earthquake and the damage it caused.
- There is a predictable and widely documented relationship between the strength of an earthquake and the amount of plate displacement that can occur.
“As a general rule, a magnitude 6.5 to 6.9 earthquake is associated with displacements of about 1 metre – while the largest known earthquakes can involve displacements of 10 to 15 metres.”
“Horizontal plate displacements can lead to the destruction of major subsurface and surface infrastructure, including water pipes, power cables, gas pipelines, and tunnels.”
Dr Anastasius Sixtus, professor of earthquake engineering at the University of Bristol, told MailOnline that the Aleppo and Gaziantep regions have experienced a series of devastating earthquakes historically, and this happened similarly about two centuries ago.
- The majority of Turkey’s landmass lies on the Anatolian Plate, which is compressed between three other large plates. To the north of the plate is the Eurasian plate, to the south is the African plate, and to the east is the Arabian plate. And because the Arabian plate pushes north to the Eurasian plate, it presses the Anatolian plate towards the west towards the Aegean Sea..
According to Dr. David Rothery, a geoscientist at the Open University, Turkey is moving about 0.8 inches (two centimeters) westward each year along the East Anatolia Rift.
He said, “Because of the friction along the fault lines, the motion is not smooth.”
“In this case, the violence of the shaking on the roof was strong enough to make buildings collapse, which is likely how most lives were lost. There might have been landslides as well in the mountainous terrain.”