Discovering a pull-apart basin using InSAR in Bursa, Turkey

The city of Bursa in Turkey is surrounded by major and secondary fault branches which splay from the North Anatolian Fault. Nonetheless, as their traces were not exactly known in the alluvial land of the Bursa basin, until this study, they were not plotted in the official active fault map of Turkey. In this study, the Bursa basin was observed by InSAR technology, and the subsidence which is consistent with the pull-apart basin geometry was detected in the basin. This finding was discussed in the local platforms in Turkey. Then, the city of Bursa was included into the priority provinces for the urban reconstruction under the risk of an earthquake, and the official active fault map of the region was revised by General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration of Turkey. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014