Speaker
Description
Kyrgyzstan, which is located in a zone of collision between the Eurasian and Indo-Australian lithosphere plates, is prone to large earthquakes as shown by its historical seismicity. In particular, between the end of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th one, several destructive earthquakes struck Kyrgyzstan, such as the Belovodskoe earthquake of August 3, 1885 (maximum intensity IX), that struck the city of Kara-Balty, just west of Bishkek (Bishkek developed as a city within the 20th century), and the Ms=8.3 Kemin earthquake of January 3, 1911. Recently, an earthquake of magnitude Ms=7.3 struck on 19 August, 1992 the western part of the Suusamyr valley, in the north Tien Shan region of Kyrgyzstan. Finally, on October 5, 2008, a magnitude 7.0 occurred along the border triangle between Kyrgyzstan - Tajikistan - China. The occurrence of close and large earthquakes makes the Kyrgyzstan the region with one of the highest seismic hazard in the world. Probabilistic seismic hazard maps at regional scale have been recently computed for Kyrgyzstan, confirming the very high hazard of the region. After this investigation at least three more studies on seismic hazard of named territory were carried out. The comparison between these studies is presented.
