Present-day kinematics and strain rate field along North Africa from seismic moment tensor summation

The geodynamics of northern Africa was examined by several studies following various approaches. All these studies concluded to a NW–SE convergence of the African plate towards the Eurasian plate with different local kinematic pattern. Seismic moment tensor summation method was adopted to study the seismic deformation and present-day kinematic along Northern Africa. In the study area, we have an interaction between the Eurasian, the Arabian and the African plates, exhibiting: (1) a collision movement in the Maghreb, Libya and Egypt with a shortening in the NW–SE direction, (2) a rifting along the Red Sea and (3) a transform fault zone in the Gulf of Aqaba. The seismic activity in Northern Africa is characterized by moderate seismic activity with strong earthquakes occurring episodically, most of the strong events are located in the Maghreb area, especially in Algeria and Morocco, the others are in the Gulf of Aqaba along the Dead Sea Fault (DSF). The seismic moment tensor summation method we adopted, leads to calculate the strain rates in several zones using the available seismic catalog of source parameters of earthquakes for Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. The catalog was compiled from several local and global databases such as Harvard CMT, ETHZ, IGN, and RCMT and others from published papers, covering the period from 1954 to 2022. The results show a counterclockwise rotation of Africa with respect to Eurasia. The general direction of movements varies from northward (N10°) in the Gulf of Aqaba to westward (N285°) in the Moroccan Rif. The resulting velocity vectors are compared to the results given by other studies using other approaches.