The northern Egyptian continental margin

• Published in: Journal of African earth sciences (1994) 2015-01, Vol.101, p.177-185
• Main Authors: Badawy, Ahmed, Mohamed, Gad, Omar, Khaled, Farid, Walid
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Continental margin; Egypt; Source mechanism; Source parameters
• ISSN: 1464-343X; 1879-1956
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jafrearsci.2014.09.009

•We have studied seismicity and seismotectonics of northern Egyptian margin.•We have estimated dynamic source parameters of three felt earthquakes.•Earthquakes are tending to clustered along three zones, with two seismic gaps.•Source mechanisms reveal both normal and reverse faulting mechanisms.•Moment tensor inversions for recent events show normal faulting rupture. Africa displays a variety of continental margin structures, tectonics and sedimentary records. The northern Egyptian continental margin represents the NE portion of the North African passive continental margin. Economically, this region is of great importance as a very rich and productive hydrocarbon zone in Egypt. Moreover, it is characterized by remarkable tectonic setting accompanied by active tectonic processes from the old Tethys to recent Mediterranean. In this article, seismicity of the northern Egyptian continental margin has been re-evaluated for more than 100-years and the source parameters of three recent earthquakes (October 2012, January 2013 and July 2013) have been estimated. Moment tensor inversions of 19th October 2012 and 17th January 2013 earthquakes reveal normal faulting mechanism with strike–slip component having seismic moment of 3.5E16Nm and 4.3E15Nm respectively. The operation of the Egyptian National Seismic Network (ENSN) since the end of 1997 has significantly enhanced the old picture of earthquake activity across northern Egyptian continental margin whereas; the record-ability (annual rate) has changed from 2-events/year to 54-event/year before and after ENSN respectively. The spatial distribution of earthquakes foci indicated that the activity tends to cluster at three zones: Mediterranean Ridge (MR), Nile Cone (NC) and Eratosthenes Seamount (ERS). However, two seismic gaps are reported along Levant Basin (LEV) and Herodotus Basin (HER).