Tectonic stress and kinematic analyses of the Ghir fault zone, Zagros, Iran

The Ghir fault zone is a thrust zone in the Zagros foreland folded belt that is located in the south of Sabz-Pushan shear zone and southeast of the Kar-e-Bas strike-slip fault zone. It is a moderately-dipping fault zone oriented parallel to the general trend of folds and thrusts in the Zagros foreland folded belt. In this study, two methods using fault slip data and focal mechanism of earthquakes were analyzed using the stress inversion method in order to reconstruct the paleostress and recent stress orientations, respectively. The results show a transpressional deformation with current compression direction along N05°E and the mean paleo-compression direction alongN33°E. Both are consistent with the general direction of compression in Zagros due to convergence of the Arabian and Iranian plates, and indicate an anticlockwise change in the compression direction over time and the Mohr circle patterns show an active transpressional zone. The stress ratio of 0.88 obtained from inversion of earthquake focal mechanism data indicates that the shape of stress ellipsoid is oblate. However, a ratioof 0.2 for obtained from inversion of fault slip data indicates a prolate shape of stress ellipsoid.