A Probabilistic Assessment of Earthquake Hazard Parameters in NW Himalaya and the Adjoining Regions

Assessment of the Relative Largest Earthquake Hazard Level in the NW Himalaya and its Adjacent Region

“…This region is one of the most seismically active continent-continent (Indian-Eurasian plates) collision type active plate margin regions of the world. Structurally, this region is controlled by large rigid lithospheric blocks of the Indian plate from the south, the Afghan block in the southwest, the Turan plate in the west, and the Tarim block in the northeast (Koulakov and Sobolev 2006, Yadav 2009, Yadav et al 2012b). The region exhibits intensive folding and thrusting, which occurred in the Cenozoic and Mesozoic era (Gansser 1964).…”

“…The trend of folding and faulting in the Himalayan region is of NW-SE to EW direction. The Main Himalayan Frontal Thrust (HFT) and the Hazara, Sulaiman, and Kirthar ranges highlight the collisional deformations of the Indian and Eurasian plates (Seeber and Armbruster 1981, Thingbaijam et al 2009, Yadav et al 2012b.…”

“…The earthquake hazard assessment of a region depends upon the quality of the prepared earthquake catalogue, i.e., compilation, homogenization of magnitude scale, removal of dependent events (foreshocks and aftershocks), and finally completeness analysis with respect to magnitude and time. In the present study, the earthquake catalogue is adopted from Yadav et al (2012b) who compiled a homogeneous and complete catalogue for the region under investigation using various historical and instrumental earthquakes catalogues. The initially compiled catalogue from different sources contains several earthquake magnitude scales, which was homogenized for moment magnitude (M W ) using different empirical relations established among bodywave magnitude (m b ), surface-wave magnitude (M S ), local magnitude (M L ), and moment magnitude (M W ).…”

“…Then, the completeness interval will be the number of years from the beginning of the period to the last year of occurrence in the catalogue. A full review of constructions and content of this catalogue can be obtained from Yadav et al (2012b).…”

“…In the study of Yadav et al (2012b) only the instrumental part of this catalogue during the period 1900-2010 with M W 4.0 was taken for the computation of earthquake hazard and the epicentral distribution of earthquakes is shown in Fig. 2.…”