Manuel Berberian

• Ph.D., University of Cambridge, UK.
• Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ

We present the source mechanisms and rupture processes for the damaging 23 February 2020 earthquake doublet of Mw 5.8 and Mw 5.9 that occurred near the Turkish-Iranian border regions of Qotur-Goharan-Mir'Omar-Ravian (NW Iran), extending towards Saray and Bas¸kale (Eastern Turkey), as obtained from seismological waveform analysis and space geodesy i...

We present the source mechanisms and rupture processes for the damaging 23 February 2020 earthquake doublet of Mw 5.8 and Mw 5.9 that occurred near the Turkish-Iranian border regions of Qotur-Goharan-Mir'Omar-Ravian (NW Iran), extending towards Saray and Başkale (Eastern Turkey), as obtained from seismological waveform analysis and space geodesy im...

Professor Sedrāk Ābdālian (1894-1963); The First Pioneering Earthquake-Geologist in Armenia and Iran and His Contributions to Geoscience [Payman Cultural Quarterly, no. 83, pp. 108-137, Spring 2018 (1397), Tehran (www.paymanonline.com)]. ABSTRACT Professor Sedrāk Ābdālian was a pioneering earthquake-geologist in West Asia who made groundbreaking fi...

Jacobson, D., and Berberian, M., 2018. Series of earthquakes strikes Iran-Iraq border. Temblor.bet. January 11, 2018. http://temblor.net/earthquake-insights/series-of-earthquakes-strikes-iran-iraq-border-6073/

2017.11.12 West Iran earthquake

Abstract: This is an in-depth review and analysis of the long and untold history of development of earth science, geological thinking, research, and exploration on the Iranian Plateau within its historical, political, and socioeconomic context. Widespread mineral resources and ancient civilization helped in exploration, excavation, smelting, and us...

http://specialpapers.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/2016.2525_04v1 Abstract The megacity of Tehran, the political, economic, and military center of Iran, is exposed to a risk of large-magnitude earthquakes originating on several adjacent and inner-city active faults. The city lies at the southern foot of the central Alborz Mountains, which frame...

http://specialpapers.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/2016.2525_05v1 The Geological Society of America Special Paper 525 Archaeological and architectural evidence of historical seismic activity along the Zāgros Main Recent fault at Borujerd (western Iranian Plateau); the 1316 C.E. earthquake Manuel Berberian* Fellow, School of Mathematics, Science,...

Archeological evaluation of earthquake effects on ancient sites and historical monuments constructed near active faults since the Neolithic provided a new perspective on identifying unknown earthquakes and their possible return periods. Despite the fact that archeological investigation in Iran has not been aimed at earthquake archeology, this appro...

Earthquakes and Coseismic Surface Faulting on the Iranian Plateau is a comprehensive and well-illustrated multi-disciplinary research work that analyzes the human and physical aspects of the active faults and large-magnitude earthquakes since ancient times on the Iranian Plateau. The long-term historical, archaeological, and sociological record of...

The introductory chapter tackles the fundamental problem of social, physical, and environmental effects of earthquakes and seismic disasters in developing countries by multidisciplinary approach, which will be expanded throughout the book. The chapter starts by asking some essential questions and tries to answer them in this and the following chapt...

The long-term nature observation by the indigenous rural people entered the myths and religious texts and became the basis for the local folklore and legends. For a long time, earthquake folklore and legends preserved and conveyed information about past major earthquakes. In this synthesis, we try to review, decipher, and analyze some of the salvag...

During this time period, 23 earthquakes were investigated and their fault maps presented. The longest ever recorded coseismic surface faulting of 125. km was mapped during the 10 May 1997 Mw 7.2 Zirkuh earthquake along the Ābiz right-lateral strike-slip fault, and the lowest magnitude earthquake with coseismic surface rupture occurred during the 14...

Based on the systematic investigation in this book of large-magnitude earthquakes and their coseismic faulting, comprehensive, reevaluated, and up-to-date parametric catalogs of ancient, historic, and modern earthquakes with additional statistical data on human casualties, damage, destruction, and economic losses are presented. The catalogs can be...

Natural disasters (especially catastrophic earthquakes) addressed in the sacred religious texts and hymns are specially tailored to convey strict religious orders and messages by using dynamic terrestrial phenomena as cosmic warnings or punishment. The aim is to show the immense divine power and the ability to control people's deeds in the society,...

This chapter deals with the long-term seismic pattern and active faulting behavior on the Iranian Plateau showing: temporal active seismic cycles (clustered earthquake sequence) followed by long period of seismic quiescence in a densely populated subparallel fault zone; segmented rupturing and along-strike migration of seismicity of a single fault...

Despite the lack of a contemporary field study of the pre-WWSSN period earthquakes, out of about 120 earthquakes of M>. 5.5, coseismic surface faulting of 16 medium- to large-magnitude earthquakes were documented, analyzed, and their causative fault maps were presented. The first field study of coseismic surface deformation by a contemporary qualif...

Eleven documented earthquakes from 1947 through 2005 in the Zāgros, East Iran, Central Iran, and Alborz showed evidence of coseismic flexural-slip folding and faulting of the surficial formations by slip along bedding planes or other structural features above seismic blind reverse faults. In all these regions, the coseismic reverse fault ruptures a...

Review of the surviving earthquake-related inscriptions preserved on historical monuments and stored in museums revealed important data on the prehistoric and historical seismicity of the area. About 27 Earthquake Inscriptions created since 1263 BCE have been reviewed and analyzed for their macroseismic content. In the case of the ca. 1263 BCE, ca....

The prolonged relationship between nature observation, active tectonic environments, and human life stretching back deep into prehistory resulted in the enduring preoccupation of early people with the source and dynamic cause of earthquakes. This obsession prompted religious and naturalistic earthquake theories and resulted in one of the oldest nat...

This chapter examines the pre-1900 earthquakes by paying close attention to evaluation of large-magnitude earthquakes and their coseismic surface ruptures recorded in the early chronicles. About 25 large-magnitude earthquakes occurring since 280 BCE with possible evidence of coseismic surface faulting were analyzed and the causative fault maps were...

Poetry has been an important art in the Persian culture since pre-Zoroastrian time and has been the main vehicle for communication and transmission of personal, local, and national political and cultural ideas. Systematic study of chronogrammatic verses in contemporary poems and odes gives dates of events along with some important macroseismic info...

The first step in earthquake disaster risk minimization is built on the knowledge and understanding of the geological setting, active tectonics, and seismicity of a region. This short chapter builds the foundation for studying and analyzing the coseismic surface faulting on the Iranian Plateau and the seismic risk. It covers the main characteristic...

Ten earthquakes were analyzed and their causative fault maps were presented in this chapter. During this time period, the largest ever recorded earthquake of Mw 7.7 occurred on 16 April 2013 along the Makrān subduction zone of southeast Iran. The event was an intermediate-depth slab earthquake associated with the subduction of oceanic crust underne...

One of the simplest tools used to identify earthquake-prone rural and mountainous areas of a vast territory such as the Iranian Plateau, where historical data for remote semi-arid areas from ancient chronicles are absent, is the study of linguistic traces and dialectical substrata found in geographic place names used as Toponymic Seismographs and S...

An interdisciplinary approach carried out in this chapter sheds light on the fact that the ancient indigenous people living on and around the Greater Iranian Plateau believed that the imaginary storm-demons/gods/kings/heroes, their spirits, or weapons, enter the Earth, shake the planet, and as a result, the mountain belts are created. At the end of...

Persian literature is among the world's oldest, spanning more than 3500 years, even recorded in the oldest hymns of Zoroaster, the Gathas of ca. 1200 BCE. Persian poems are very strong everyday expressions and can be found in every classical and modern work in every home. They have become part of the inherited Iranian psyche. The local and national...

Our multidisciplinary investigation represents off-fault archaeoseismic indicators recorded in the archaeological remains at mounds and structural elements of monuments situated along the Kāzerun fault in the western Zagros Mountains since the Chalcolithic period. The study revealed two large magnitude earthquakes (~M>7.0, possibly ~7.3) ca. 3850-3...

According to an article printed in 1909 in a local Iranian newspaper, the New Iran ( Irān‐e Nau ; Fig. 1), a telegraph operator at the remote desert town of Kermān in southeast Iran, using coils of a single wire with return circuit through the ground of his telegraph instrument, picked up the Earth’s movement as an unusual electromagnetic signal on...

Historical literature may constitute a valuable source of information to reconstruct sea-level changes. Here, historical documents and geological records have been combined to reconstruct Caspian sea-level (CSL) changes during the last millennium. In addition to a comprehensive literature review, new data from two short sediment cores were obtained...

Historical literature may constitute a valuable source of information to reconstruct sea level changes. Here, historical documents and geological records have been combined to reconstruct Caspian sea-level (CSL) changes during the last millennium. In addition to a literature survey, new data from two short sediment cores were obtained from the sout...

New pollen evidence from two sites in south-central Zagros (Lake Maharlou), SW Iran, and Sahand Mountains (Lake Almalou), NW Iran, provide evidence for the emergence of tree cultivation in SW Iran from the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC and upland agricultural activities in NW Iran from 5th to 3rd centuries BC. Juglans cf regia could have been cultivated...

The Rudbar earthquake of 1990 June 20, the first large-magnitude earthquake with 80 km left-lateral strike-slip motion in the western `High-Alborz' fold-thrust mountain belt, was one of the largest, and most destructive, earthquakes to have occurred in Iran during the instrumental period. We bring together new and existing data on macroseismic effe...

A pollen diagram was prepared from Lake Almalou, a volcanic crater wetland located on the eastern flanks of the Sahand Volcanic Complex in NW Iran. The core provides a 3700-year record of human activity and environmental change in an upland region. We attempt to relate vegetation changes to both climatic change and historical events. Variations of...

“…King Ardeshir Babakan Sassanid [r. AD 224-241], by conquering Kerman and Bam, killed the ‘Kerm-e-Haftvad’ [the Haftvad Silk Worm] at the Bam Citadel. The gigantic worm burst with a big bang noise, which rocked the area, completely destroyed the Bam Citadel, and killed most of the inhabitants of the Citadel. King Ardeshir put an end to the rule of...

We use observations of surface faulting, well-constrained earthquake focal mechanisms and centroid depths, and velocity structure determined by surface wave propagation and teleseismic receiver functions to investigate the present-day deformation and kinematics in and around the South Caspian Basin. The lack of earthquakes within the basin itself i...

The 1998 March 14 Fandoqa earthquake (M-s 6.6) was the penultimate in a series of five substantial earthquakes on the Gowk fault system of southeast Iran since 1981, all of which were associated with co-seismic surface ruptures. We use observations of surface faulting, analysis of P and SH body waves, SAR interferometry and geomorphology to investi...

We use archaeological evidence to identify ancient earthquakes in the vicinity of large 20th century events in the Iranian Plateau. Two large earthquakes on the Zagros Main Recent Fault were preceded by historical earthquakes in AD 1008 and AD 1107 and by earthquakes in the intervals AD 224–459 and 1650–1600 BC, giving return times of 1800–2100, 50...

In 1994 a sequence of five earthquakes with Mw 5.5-6.2 occurred in the Sistan belt of eastern Iran, all of them involving motion on blind thrusts with centroid depths of 5-10km. Coseismic ruptures at the surface involved bedding-plane slip on a growing hanging-wall anticline displaying geomorphological evidence of uplift and lateral propagation. Th...

The destructive Zirkuh-e-Qa'enat earthquake of 1997 May 10 (Mw 7.2, Ms 7.3, mb 6.3) produced 125 km of NNW-SSE right-lateral strike-slip surface faulting on the Abiz fault in the Sistan suture zone of eastern Iran: the longest known surface rupture associated with an Iranian earthquake. Analysis of the body-wave seismograms from the main shock show...

This chapter deals with the long-term seismic pattern and active faulting behavior on the Iranian Plateau, showing: temporal active seismic cycles (clustered earthquake sequence) followed by a long period of seismic quiescence in a densely populated subparallel fault zone segmented rupturing and along-strike migration of seismicity of a single faul...

The Iranian plateau accommodates the 35 mm/yr convergence rate between the Eurasian and Arabian plates by strike-slip and reverse faults with relatively low slip rates in a zone 1000 km across. Although these faults have only locally been the subject of paleoseismological studies, a rich historical and archeological record spans several thousand ye...

The basement-involved active fold-thrust belt of the Zagros in southwest Iran is underlain by numerous seismogenic blind basement thrust faults covered by the folded Phanerozoic sedimentary rocks. Meizoseismal regions of moderate- to large-magnitude earthquakes in the Zagros are localized and concentrated along particular structural-geomorphologica...

The South Golbaf earthquake of November 20, 1989 (ms 5.7, mb 5.6, I VII), in southeast Iran, was associated with coseismic surface faulting and folding. Surface faults 11 km (west-dipping) and 8 km (east-dipping) long with oblique reverse mechanisms developed on both sides of a small Holocene playa. Apparently, repeated coseismic fault-related fold...

The Rudbar-Tarom earthquake of 20 June 1990 (Ms 7.7, mb 6.4, Mw 7.3) killed ~40 000 people in the densely populated area of the western Alborz mountains, southwest of the Caspian Sea. Both faulting and folding associated with the earthquake were observed in the epicentral area. Co-seismic surface faulting was associated with at least three main dis...

(Ms = 7.7, Mb=6.4, Io=X), looking east. The Rudbar-Tarom earthquake in northwest Iran, along with its aftershocks, claimed more than 40,000 lives (according to official reports), left more than 500,000 homeless, and destroyed three cities (Rudbar, Manjil, and Lowshan). It also completely destroyed 700 villages, slightly damaged 300 more, and caused...

In 1981 June and July, 2 large earthquakes occurred on the Gowk Fault System in SE Iran. Both earthquakes were associated with surface faulting showing a combination of reverse and right lateral strike-slip motion on parallel, adjacent faults striking N-S and dipping both E and W. Such motion can be seen to have occurred in the recent past. The lon...

This S Russian depression is a relatively stable block surrounded by active fold-thrust belts of arcuate form which have undergone intense Late Cainozoic crustal shortening; it may be a relic of an old (Palaeozoic-Triassic) ocean or a marginal sea developed behind a Mesozoic-Palaeogene ocean. A tectono-sedimentary study of the region, coupled with...