Earthquake sequence in the NE Lut, Iran: observations from multiple space geodetic techniques

International audienceAn increasing number of observations supports temporal clustering behaviour of earthquakes within fault systems. As earthquake occurrence is mainly controlled by the crustal stresses, it is crucial to determine their spatio-temporal evolution to understand the generation of catastrophic seismic sequences. A possible way to constrain these variations is to measure the surface displacement field induced by seismic sequences. However, the observation time of modern satellite geodesy (InSAR/GPS) is short compared to the duration of an earthquake sequence. Thus, the goal of this paper is to extend the temporal range of observations of a seismic sequence. We focus on the largest earthquakes of the 1936–1997, Northeast Lut, Iran, sequence that is composed of 11 Mw ≧ ∼ 6 earthquakes. Using subpixel correlation of historic (KH9) and recent (Sentinel-2) optical satellite images, we measure for the first time the surface displacement field of the 1979 Mw 7.1 Khuli-Boniabad earthquake, which broke the eastern part of the Dasht-e-Bayaz fault. Using subpixel correlation of optical (SPOT2-4) and SAR (JERS-2) images, we also measure the surface displacement field of the Mw 7.2 Zirkuh earthquake, which ruptured the Abiz fault. We found that both earthquakes have a mean slip of 2.5 m but the Khuli-Boniabad earthquake broke two main segments (total rupture ∼ 60 km), whereas the Zirkuh earthquake broke three main segments (total rupture ∼ 125 km). We suggest that the differences are controlled by the maturity of the faults, the Dasht-e-Bayaz fault being less mature than the Abiz fault. Furthermore, we succeed to measure offsets up to 2.60 m for the 1979 Mw 6.6 Korizan earthquake that broke the northern part of the Abiz fault. It is the first time that the surface displacement field for such a small historic earthquake has been measured using optical correlation. Finally, our study confirms the potential of historical optical imagery for retrieving surface displacements for past earthquakes (pre-modern geodesy era)