Structural Maturity of Active Faults and Evolutionionary Pattern of Seismic Activity in Eastern Iran

Depending on their structural maturity, seismogenic faults,, may rupture in one segment or as multiple segments; they also may show different slips on their segments. Mature faults break in long ruptures with small slip, while immature faults rupture as short segments but are more energetic. On the other hand, the mature faults demonstrate clustering pattern in their earthquake recurrence pattern. Also, the ground motions produced by earthquakes on immature faults are larger than those generated by earthquakes on mature faults. In this paper, we defined maturity of major faults in Eastern Iran seismotectonic Province, considering their segmentation, rupture length, displacement vector on the rupture and the history of clustered earthquake sequence on the fault. Then, the response spectrum of ground motions caused by large earthquakes occurred on these faults were calculated. To reduce the effect of unknown wave paths, we used ground motions recorded in the near field. Earthquakes of different mechanisms were ed in magnitude range Mw=5.7 to 7.1. We compared the obtained response spectrum with those resulted the experimental model presented by Boore et al. (1997). Study of this parameter can help to recognized ground motion potenial of the faults, and considering it in extracting attenuation equations increases the accuracy of the results for seismic hazard assessment. Using our evaluation for structural maturity of the faults, we try to present a model for evolution of seismic activity in Eastern Iran.