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Anatolia Tectonic Block & North Anatolia Fault

2023 FEB 11

Preliminary   > Geography   >   Places in news   >   Places in news

Why in news?

  • Recently, powerful tremors were felt in Turkey after an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck along a well-known fault line called the Anatolia tectonic block.
  • It is being described as the strongest earthquake that Turkey has experienced in over a century and the worst disaster since 1939.
  • The 1939 earthquake was the Erzincan earthquake that had caused “extreme damage in the Erzincan Plain and the Kelkit River Valley.

About Anatolia Tectonic Block & North Anatolia Fault:

  • The Eastern Mediterranean region comprising Turkey, Syria and Jordan, tectonics are dominated by complex interactions between the African, Arabian, and Eurasian tectonic plates, and the Anatolian tectonic block.
  • Turkey sits on the Anatolian tectonic plate, which borders two major faults, the North Anatolian Fault (NAF) that cuts across the country from west to east, and the East Anatolian Fault (EAF) in the southeast.
  • The NAF line is the meeting point of the Eurasian and Anatolian tectonic plates that is known to be “Particularly Devastating”.
  • NAF is right-lateral strike-slip structure in northern Turkey accommodating much of the translational motion of the Anatolia block westwards with respect to Eurasia and Africa.
  • The EAF is the tectonic boundary between the Anatolian Plate and the northward-moving Arabian Plate. It runs 650 kilometers from eastern Turkey and into the Mediterranean.
  • In addition to this, the Aegean Sea Plate, located in the eastern Mediterranean Sea under southern Greece and western Turkey, is also a source of seismic activity in the region.
  • According to one estimate, almost 95% of Turkey's land mass is prone to earthquakes, while about a third of the country is at high risk, including the areas around the major cities of Istanbul and Izmir and the region of East Anatolia.

PRACTICE QUESTION:

Consider the following pairs:

Region often mentioned in the news:   Country

1. Anatolia                   : Turkey

2. Amhara                   : Ethiopia

3. Cabo Delgado       : Spain

4. Catalonia               : Italy

How many pairs given above are correctly matched? (2022)

(a) Only one pair

(b) Only two pairs

(c) Only three pairs

(d) All four pairs

                 A

">Answer