A seismic array on the Prince Islands offshore Istanbul to monitor the microseismic activity at the seismic gap below the Sea of Marmara

PIRES

PIRES (Prince Islands Real-time Earthquake System) aims at monitoring the microseismic activity at the main branch of the North Anatolian Fault (NAFZ) below the Sea of Marmara. This part of the NAFZ is considered to represent a seismic gap being capable to host a M>7 earthquake in the near future. PIRES consists of two subarrays installed on the two outermost islands (Yassiada and Sivriada) of the Princes Islands group offshore Istanbul. They are located on the continental shelf in close proximity of a pronounced submarine slope, where the sea floor drops by about 800m towards the Cinarcik Basin. PIRES subarrays consist of five seismic stations at the surface that will be extended by a vertical chain of borehole seismometers in up to 400m deep boreholes in the near future. PIRES allows to lower the regional magnitude threshold from 2.8 to ~1.5 allowing to detect and analyze ongoing deformation at the eastern seismic gap on a long-term base for the first time.

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