Synthetic seismicity obtained by block movements modeling for the territory of Bulgaria: preliminary results

Abstract

The Bulgarian Region is located in the Southeastern Europe, with not so frequent recent seismicity. Several strong seismic events in the beginning of the XX century evidenced the capability of the main faults to accumulate significant energy. In this study, we investigate the seismicity in the region using the numerical block-and-fault dynamics (BAFD) model of lithosphere dynamics and seismicity. The morphostructural zoning outlines major crustal blocks, and external driving motions are prescribed using GPS data. We performed preliminary test for the simplified block structure to compile the synthetic earthquake catalogue for the Bulgarian region.