Interseismic Strain Accumulation across the Main Recent Fault, SW Iran,
from Sentinel-1 InSAR Observations
Abstract
The Main Recent Fault is a major right-lateral strike-slip fault in the
western Zagros mountains of Iran. Previous studies have estimated a wide
range of slip rates from both sparse GNSS (1–6 mm/yr) and
geological/geomorphological (1.6–17 mm/yr) methods. None of these
studies have estimated the depth to the top of the locked seismogenic
zone. Characterizing this “locking depth” for the Main Recent Fault,
and more accurately constraining its interseismic slip rate, are both
critical for estimating the seismic hazard posed by the fault, as well
as for understanding how oblique convergence is accommodated and
partitioned across the Zagros. To address this important knowledge gap
for the MRF, here we use 200 Sentinel-1 SAR images from the past 5
years, spanning two ascending and two descending tracks, to estimate the
first InSAR-derived slip rate and locking depth for a 300 km long
section of the fault. We utilise two established processing systems,
LiCSAR and LiCSBAS, to produce interferograms and perform time series
analysis, respectively. We constrain north-south motion using GNSS
observations, decompose our InSAR line-of-sight velocities into
fault-parallel and vertical motion, and fit 1-D screw dislocation models
to three fault-perpendicular profiles of fault-parallel velocity,
following a Bayesian approach to estimate the posterior probability
distribution on the fault parameters. We estimate an interseismic slip
velocity of $3.0\pm1.0$ mm/yr below a loosely
constrained 18–30 km locking depth, the first such estimate for the
fault, and discuss the challenges in constraining the locking depth for
low magnitude interseismic signals.