@article{DonnerGhodsKrueeretal.2015,
  author    = {Donner, Stefanie and Ghods, Abdolreza and Kr{\"u}er, Frank and R{\"o}ßler, Dirk and Landgraf, Angela and Ballato, Paolo},
  title     = {The Ahar-Varzeghan Earthquake Doublet (M-w 6.4 and 6.2) of 11 August 2012: Regional Seismic Moment Tensors},
  series = {Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America},
  volume    = {105},
  journal   = {Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America},
  number    = {2A},
  publisher = {Seismological Society of America},
  address   = {Albany},
  issn      = {0037-1106},
  doi       = {10.1785/0120140042},
  pages     = {791 -- 807},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {On 11 August 2012 an earthquake doublet (M-w 6.4 and 6.2) occurred near the city of Ahar, northwest Iran. Both events were only 6 km and 11 minutes apart, producing a surface rupture of about 12 km in length. Historical and modern seismicity has so far been sparse in this area. Spatially, the region represents a transitional zone between different tectonic domains, including compression in Iran, westward extrusion of the Anatolian plate, and thrusting beneath the Caucasus. In this study, we inverted the surface waveforms of the two mainshocks and 11 aftershocks (M-w >= 4.3) to obtain regional seismic moment tensors. The earthquakes analyzed can be grouped into pure strike slip (including the first mainshock) and oblique reverse mechanisms (including the second mainshock). The sequence provides information about faulting mechanisms at the spatial scale of the entire rock volume affected by the earthquake doublet, including coinciding deformation on minor faults (sub) parallel to the main fault and Riedel shears. It occurred on a so far unknown fault structure, which we call the Ahar fault. Alongside the seismological data, we used geological maps, satellite images, and digital elevation data to analyze the geomorphology of the region. Our analysis suggests that the adjacent North Tabriz fault, which accomodates up to 7 mm/yr of right-lateral strike-slip faulting, does not compensate the entire lateral shear strain, and that part of it is compensated farther north. Combined, our results suggest a temporally and spatially complex style of deformation (reverse and strike slip) overprinting older reverse deformation.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{GhodsShabanianBergmanetal.2015,
  author    = {Ghods, Abdolreza and Shabanian, Esmaeil and Bergman, Eric and Faridi, Mohammad and Donner, Stefanie and Mortezanejad, Gholamreza and Aziz-Zanjani, Asiyeh},
  title     = {The Varzaghan-Ahar, Iran, Earthquake Doublet (M-w 6.4, 6.2): implications for the geodynamics of northwest Iran},
  series = {Geophysical journal international},
  volume    = {203},
  journal   = {Geophysical journal international},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press},
  address   = {Oxford},
  issn      = {0956-540X},
  doi       = {10.1093/gji/ggv306},
  pages     = {522 -- 540},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {On 2012 August 11, a pair of large, damaging earthquakes struck the Varzaghan-Ahar region in northwest Iran, in a region where there was no major mapped fault or any well-documented historical seismicity. To investigate the active tectonics of the source region we applied a combination of seismological methods (local aftershock network, calibrated multiple event relocation and focal mechanism studies), field observations (structural geology and geomorphological) and inversions for the regional stress field. The epicentral region is north of the North Tabriz Fault. The first main shock is characterized by right-lateral strike-slip motion on an almost E-W fault plane of about 23 km length extending from the surface to a depth of about 14 km. The second main shock occurred on an ENE-striking fault that dips at 60-70A degrees to the NW. Independent inversions of focal mechanisms and geologically determined fault kinematic data for the active stress state yield a transpressional tectonic regime with sigma(1) oriented N132E. For the region northeast of the North Tabriz Fault, the presence of rigid lithosphere of the South Caspian Basin implies the kinematic adjustment by northward transferring of the contracted masses through both distributed deformation and structural deflections. Our results suggest that the kinematic adjustment inside a contracting wedge may occur along interacting crosswise or conjugate faults to accommodate low rates of internal deformation. At a global scale, our results indicate that despite the basic assumption of 'rigid blocks' in geodetic plate modelling, internal deformation of block-like regions could control the kinematics of deformation and the level of seismic hazard within and around such regions of low deformation rate.},
  language  = {en}
}