News — Dr Carmen Solana, course leader for at the University of Portsmouth:
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"Earthquakes cannot be accurately forecast, so prevention of the consequences depends on the country’s preparedness, such as earthquake resistant infrastructure, and efficient response.
"The resistant infrastructure unfortunately is patchy in South Turkey and especially in Syria, so saving lives now mostly relies on a quick response. The next 24 hours are crucial to find survivors, after 48 hours the number of survivors decreases enormously."
Dr Catherine Mottram, Senior Lecturer in Structural Geology and Tectonics at the University of Portsmouth:
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"Earthquakes occur when locked portions of faults suddenly 'break', resulting in rocks moving rapidly during catastrophic failure events. Aftershocks are usually lower magnitude earthquakes that happen as the crust settles and recovers in the new position.
"There is the potential that the 7.5 magnitude shock was related to a second period of movement along a different depth or along strike location on the fault, or on a different fault strand. Geophysicists will be able to reconstruct exactly where movement occurred along the fault by reconstructing data collected by seismometers in the region, so more information should come out in the coming days and weeks about exactly what happened.
"The earthquake likely occurred on either the East Anatolian Fault or Dead Sea Transform, both of these are strike-slip faults, so a very similar geological setting to the San Andreas Fault in North America. The East Anatolian Fault is also a plate boundary between the broadly northward moving Arabian plate and the westward moving Anatolian plate. The Anatolian plate is very seismically active and is bordered by two strike-slip faults, the North and East Anatolian faults. There is also volcanic activity and other modern geological hazards associated with the boundaries."
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