Past and Future Earthquake Hazard in Asia

Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan are lands of high mountains, faults, and earthquakes in the heart of Asia. The active deformation is due to the collision of India and Asia, which has generated faulting and mountain-building covering a region stretching from the Himalaya to Siberia, and is one of the main testing-grounds for theories of continental tectonics. A feature of many of the regions in which mountains are forming at the present-day - including central Asia - is that they are situated hundreds, or even thousands, of kilometres away from plate boundaries. As well as causing a widespread hazard to local populations, the very wide distribution of faulting within the continents show that they behave rather differently from oceanic plates, in which relative plate motions are accommodated within very narrow plate boundary zones. We still do not understand the rules that govern the distribution, in space and time, of major episodes of mountain building; but an essential first step in understanding these rules, which remains one of the fundamental goals in the study of continental tectonics, is to provide constraints on the distribution, rates, and evolution of deformation.