This research involves the one-year deployment of portable PASSCAL seismograph stations in eastern Turkey to investigate the Eurasian/Arabian plate margin across the Bitlis suture and East Anatolian Fault. The experiment and subsequent data analyses will be a joint, cooperative project between Cornell University and Turkish scientists from Kandilli Seismological Observatory. The methods used to study the data will include teleseismic and regional waveform modeling, travel-time tomography, hypocenter location inversion, and shear-wave splitting analysis. The results of applying these techniques to the broadband data will allow an inference of the rheology, thickness, and deformation of the Anatolian crust and lithosphere. One of the least understood processes within the framework of plate tectonics is the mechanism for continent-continent collision, yet this process plays a critical role in the development and growth of the continents on earth. This seismically active area generates considerable earthquake hazard. This research is a component of the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program. ***
