Stress Distribution in the Western India-Eurasia Collision Zone: A
Region of Varying Stress Fields in a Compressional Regime
Abstract
The western India-Eurasia collision zone (IECZ) has experienced
devastating earthquakes in the past century and continues to be
seismically active. However, the Stress regime and Seismotectonics of
the region remains poorly understood. In view of this, we carried out
iterative, joint stress inversions of 245 well-constrained earthquake
focal mechanisms to constrain the stress regime and its spatial
variability in the region and dwell upon their implications for
earthquake generation. Salient new findings from the study are, (i) the
Kangra-Chamba-Kishtwar region shows arc-oblique horizontal maximum
compressive stress (sigma 1, WSW-ENE) in contrast to arc-normal
(NNE-SSW) in other regions of the Himalaya, (ii) the Kashmir earthquake
sequence (in 2005) and its epicentral region i.e. the Hazara Syntaxis
show similar stress patterns with that of the Central Himalaya, (iii)
Nanga Parbat Syntaxis experiences pure extension, and (iv) Kaurik Chango
Rift, with N-S trending sigma 1, probably extends deep into the
Karakoram fault. Based on these findings, we categorize the region into
six state of stress fields consistent with geology and plate motion
models. The magnitudes for these stress fields show a decreasing trend
from 0.90 in the southeast (Garhwal-Kumaun-Shimla) to 0.46 in the
northwest (Hazara Syntaxis) and 0.39 in the northeast (Karakoram)
suggesting multiple tectonic forces in northwestern and northeastern
regions. The study reveals heterogeneity in the stress field within the
western IECZ, induced by tectonic forces and structural variability.