Description of the Active Faults of Eurasia Database

Introduction   Principles and methods   Source materials   Object properties   Justifying attributes   Valuation attributes   Conclusion  

4. Conclusion

The presented new Active Faults of Eurasia (and Adjacent seas) Database (AFEAD) integrated, according to unified methodological principles, an extensive and diverse volume of materials on active faults and related structural forms with signs of recent movements in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. This material (more than 30,000 objects) is uniformly formatted and equipped with a geographic reference of objects reduced to the same scale. The working scale in which the database was compiled is 1: 500,000. The base demonstration scale is 1: 1,000,000.

The database, the compilation procedure of which is described above, is constructed in such a way that each of its objects is equipped with two types of characteristics (attributes) - substantiating and evaluative. The substantiating attributes contain formatted information about active faults, fault zones and other active structures in a certain way — their names, data on morphology and kinematics (direction of movement), displacement amplitudes for different periods of time and movement speeds calculated from them, age of recent signs of activity, manifestations seismicity and paleoseismicity, the ratio of active structures with parameters of crustal earthquakes and other characteristics presented in text form, as well as information about and source of information.

Evaluation attributes are a system of symbols (indices) reflecting the most important parameters of active structures - their kinematics in the framework of typification adopted in structural geology, the rate of speed of late Quaternary movements (three gradations) and the degree of reliability of distinguishing a structure as active, i.e. validity of the fact of the Late Pleistocene-Holocene movements (four gradations). These indices make it easy to correlate objects according to any of the attributes in a computer way with each other and with any other types of digitized information.

So, the database provides a convenient opportunity both for extracting specific information about individual faults and their manifestations in different territories, and for solving more general tasks - thematic mapping, determining the intensity and parameters of the manifestation of modern geodynamic processes, assessing seismic and other geodynamic hazards of territories, tectonic zoning and trends of tectonic development at the last, Pliocene-Quaternary, stage of Earth development.

Thus, the database AFEAD is a significant contribution to the study of tectonic processes and ensuring the security of Russia and other Eurasian countries from natural disasters of geodynamic origin. The format for building the database allows for its continuous replenishment and correction with the advent of new information about active tectonics. The database is equipped with a brief guide for the user and a complete list of published literature and other sources used to compile it. This list will be replenished as the database is updated and updated.

See also: Database visualization