The 2000 Turkmenistan earthquake took place at 8:11 p.m. Moscow Time on December 6 and had a magnitude of 7.0. The
intensity of the earthquake reached VII at its epicenter, and IV at the Turkmen capital of
Ashgabat
Ashgabat or Asgabat ( tk, Aşgabat, ; fa, عشقآباد, translit='Ešqābād, formerly named Poltoratsk ( rus, Полтора́цк, p=pəltɐˈratsk) between 1919 and 1927), is the capital and the largest city of Turkmenistan. It lie ...
.
The epicentre was located approximately 25 kilometers north of the city of
Balkanabat and 125 kilometres southeast of
Türkmenbaşy. There were unconfirmed reports that the quake killed up to 11 people and injured 5 others.
Tectonic setting
Turkmenistan lies at the northern edge of the zone of complex tectonics caused by the continuing
collision
In physics, a collision is any event in which two or more bodies exert forces on each other in a relatively short time. Although the most common use of the word ''collision'' refers to incidents in which two or more objects collide with great fo ...
between the
Arabian Plate
The Arabian Plate is a minor tectonic plate in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres.
It is one of the three continental plates (along with the African and the Indian Plates) that have been moving northward in geological history and colliding ...
and the
Eurasian Plate
The Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Eurasia (a landmass consisting of the traditional continents of Europe and Asia), with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent and ...
. The main structure in the
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia ...
is the
Apsheron Sill, a zone of active
subduction. The trend of the Apsheron sill is quite oblique to the overall plate motion and this results in significant amounts of right lateral
strike-slip along this structure in an overall
transpression
In geology, transpression is a type of strike-slip deformation that deviates from simple shear because of a simultaneous component of shortening perpendicular to the fault plane. This movement ends up resulting in oblique shear. It is generally v ...
al setting. Onshore, the motion along the Apsheron sill is transferred to the Ashgabat Fault, another right lateral strike-slip fault, across a large restraining bend.
Earthquake
The
focal mechanism for this event indicates that it was the result of oblique reverse faulting on one of two possible faults, either northwest–southeast or west–east trending.
See also
*
List of earthquakes in 2000
References
External links
Strong Earthquake Hits Turkmenistan– ''
People's Daily''
*
Earthquakes in Asia
Natural disasters in Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...
Earthquake
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...
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