The Idrija Fault (; sl, Idrijski prelom) is a seismically

active fault An active fault is a fault that is likely to become the source of another earthquake sometime in the future. Geologists commonly consider faults to be active if there has been movement observed or evidence of seismic activity during the last 10,0 ...

Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...

. It strikes NW–SE and the fault plane dips towards the northeast. The activity along the fault started in the

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...

with normal faulting and changed to dextral strike-slip in

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Marko Vincenc Lipold Marko may refer to: * Marko (given name) * Marko (surname) * Márkó, a village in Hungary See also *Marco (disambiguation) *Markko (disambiguation) *Marka (disambiguation) *Markov *Marku Marku is an Albanian surname. Notable people with the ...

, a geologist from Slovenia. Present displacement is measured and varies along strike but is in the order of magnitude of 0.1 mm per year. The strongest earthquake along the Idrija Fault was the 1511 Western Slovenia earthquake (or 1511 Idrija earthquake), which took place on 26 March 1511, had a

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

of 6.8, and caused about 12,000 deaths.

References

{{Reflist Geology of Slovenia Dinaric Alps Seismic faults of Europe