Eos, Vol. 87, No.
11, 14 March 2006
management, and the protection of endan-
gered species. In addition,“the potential for
departures from average climatic conditions
threatens to disrupt society and local to
regional economies,” the report stated.
“Meeting these challenges will require
bright minds to balance between the growth
of cities and the desire for sustainability,”
said USGS scientist and report co-author
Mark Anderson.“The need for scientific
information has grown.”
MEETINGS
The last major urban earthquake to strike
Pakistan prior to 2005 severely damaged the
city of Quetta in 1935 and killed 35,000 peo-
Conferees Examine Deadly
2005 Kashmir Earthquake
PAGE 115
ple. In the last 70 years, although much prog-
ress has been made in studying the location
of active faults and zones of seismicity in
Pakistan, the general public in Pakistan has
not yet fully understood or recognized the
earthquake hazard. The near-destruction of
two towns—Balakot in the North-West Fron-
tier Province, and Muzaffarabad, the capital
of Azad Jammu Kashmir Province—and the
deaths of more than 70,000 people caused by
the 8 October 2005 Kashmir earthquake (Mw
7.6) led the government of Pakistan to request
a scientific response and plan of action.
Accordingly, the Geological Survey of Paki-
stan (GSP) organized a recent international
conference, which was attended by Pakistani
scientists and participants from Austria,
France, India, Iran, Japan, Turkey, the United
Kingdom, and the United States [Kausar
et al., 2006].
Prior to the conference, GSP had mapped
the northwest striking Balakot-Bagh source
fault based in part on the distributions of
landslides and catastrophic damage. Por-
tions of this fault near Muzaffarabad had
been mapped by Nakata et al. [1991] based
on the interpretation of aerial photographs,
and its extension to the southeast had been
mapped on 1:50,000-scale quadrangles by
GSP prior to the earthquake.
The Earthquake Source Fault
The fault follows the Indus-Kohistan Seis-
mic Zone of Armbruster et al. [1978], identi-
fied from a local seismic network established
by Pakistan’s Water and Power Development
Authority.This zone, the northwestern termina-
tion of a belt of moderate seismicity that
extends through the Himalayan Mountains
in India and Nepal, continues northwest to
the Indus River, as noted at the conference by
Paul Tapponnier (Institut de Physique du
Globe de Paris, France).This zone cuts across
To address this, case studies and examples
were used in the report to outline different
ways that science has successfully addressed
past regional water resource needs.
For example, the management strategies
of Arizona’s Glen Canyon Dam on the Colo-
rado River have been modified to consider
endangered species issues.“The release of
water from the dam will affect the habitat of
the Kanab ambersnail, a species that only
lives in one place downstream of the dam,”
the Hazara-Kashmir syntaxis that is defined
by the Panjal (Main Central) thrust and Mur-
ree (Main Boundary) thrust; this indicates
that the surface traces of these major tectonic
features are inactive in Pakistan, although
parts of the Murree thrust were reactivated in
2005.
Tapponnier showed that the active fault
system could be seen in the surface geomor-
phology of the region. Through analysis of
CORONA satellite images, Takashi Nakata
(Hiroshima Institute of Technology, Japan)
extended previous mapping of active faults
beyond the 1991 report. Tapponnier, in addi-
tion, pointed out the hazard from the Jhelum
strike-slip fault, which may control the anom-
alous southward straight path of the Jhelum
River between Muzaffarabad and Mangla
Dam; nine streams on the west side of the
Fig. 1.View northeast toward large landslide of Muzaffarabad Limestone into the Neelum River
north of Muzaffarabad, showing the active trace of a lateral ramp of the Balakot-Bagh fault, here
probably a fold scarp, with the active zone at the base. According to locals, this scarp appeared
during the earthquake. Photo by Robert Yeats.
explained Anderson.When a controlled
flood was conducted in 1996,“there was a
need to translate the physical habitat require-
ments of that snail to an actual allowable
water level. Such issues were rarely encoun-
tered 30 years ago.”
USGS representatives hope the report
informs water resource managers of different
scientifically sound management options.
—MOHI KUMAR, Staff Writer
river are offset left laterally. The speakers
noted that better definitions of existing faults
in the area could help disaster planners esti-
mate the risks faced in certain areas, espe-
cially to the proposed Neelum-Jhelum Dam.
Robert Yeats (Earth Consultants Interna-
tional, Corvallis, Ore.), and Tom Parsons (U.S.
Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.)
showed that there was an increase in stress
after the earthquake on the northwest and
southeast extensions of the Balakot-Bagh
fault, but a decrease in stress toward Islam-
abad-Rawalpindi and the Salt Range thrust,
the local name for the Himalayan frontal
fault. These results are comparable to those
published earlier by Wallace et al. [2005] on
the 1905 Kangra, India, earthquake of Mw 7.8,
which also apparently did not propagate to
the Himalayan front. The presence of a possi-
ble unruptured seismic gap in Kashmir
between the 1905 and 2005 earthquakes led
to a call by meeting participants for collab-
orative work between the scientists of India
and Pakistan.
Mirza Shahid Baig of the University of
Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK) in Muzaffar-
abad, Pakistan, was outside when the

earthquake struck, so that his life was spared
despite the complete destruction of his uni-
versity campus and the deaths of an entire
classroom of geology students. His university
was moved temporarily to Islamabad, but
Baig returned to AJK and mapped surface
rupture from the 2005 earthquake, describ-
ing 2.5 meters of reverse slip and 2 meters of
right-lateral slip. At the meeting, Baig
described his results and also pointed out
the hazard from the Jhelum fault, which
would affect dams upstream and down-
stream from the earthquake.
Major Landslides
Mehdi Zaré (International Institute of
Earthquake Engineering and Seismology, Teh-
ran, Iran) discussed surface ruptures and
their relation to landslides along the fault
trace and to heavily damaged structures. The
focal mechanism of this earthquake was dip-
slip reverse with a strike-slip component. Sur-
face rupture was no surprise based on the
sharpness of surface deformation as mea-
sured by line-of-sight displacements on syn-
thetic aperture radar from the Envisat satel-
lite, as reported by Satoshi Fujiwara
(Geographical Survey Institute, Tsukuba,
Japan).
The landslides were spectacular. Hiroshi
Sato (Geographical Survey Institute, Tsukuba,
Japan), using IKONOS and SPOT 5 satellite
imagery, showed that the landslides occurred
near the rupture, predominantly on the
northeast, or hanging wall, side. Minoru Urai
(Geological Survey of Japan, Tsukuba)
showed that ASTER satellite imagery was
useful in landslide mapping. Satellite map-
ping of landslides has the advantage that the
maps can be provided to local search-and-
rescue teams to reach quickly the most
heavily damaged areas. Ömer Aydan (Tokai
University, Shizuoka, Japan) classified the
landslides as soil slope failures, weathered
and sheared rock-slope failures, and rock-
slope failures.
Jean Schneider (University of Natural
Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Aus-
tria) described the huge Hattian slide cover-
ing an area of nearly five square kilometers
that dammed two tributaries of the Jhelum
River, posing a potential flood risk from one
of the lakes rising behind the slide. The slide
covered a distance of 2.75 kilometers in less
than 30 seconds. Satellite imagery showed
that the Hattian slide took place on the site
of an older slide.The future hazards include
seepage or piping within the dam mass
blocking the larger lake, overtopping of the
dam, and a future slide into the lake causing
Eos, Vol. 87, No. 11, 14 March 2006
a flood wave to overtop the dam. David Pet-
ley (Durham University, U.K.) presented a
scenario for the future based on a large
slide in Taiwan triggered by the 1999 Chi-Chi
earthquake. The area of that landslide and
the sediment provided to streams have
increased dramatically since the earthquake,
presumably due to the weakening of slopes
by strong ground motion.
Earthquake Engineering
in a Developing Country
The failure of many structures, including
an apartment building in Islamabad, led to a
discussion of engineering issues. These
included geotechnical engineering of cut
slopes by Imran Bukhari (University of Engi-
neering and Technology, Taxila, Pakistan)
and Aydan, the rehabilitation of bridges
(Hiroyuki Kodama, University of Tokyo,
Japan), and ways to improve the perfor-
mance of low-strength masonry buildings
(Robin Spence, Cambridge University, U.K.).
Spence pointed out that engineering solu-
tions must take into account the limited
resources of local communities to retrofit
buildings in the manner of a Western coun-
try. On the basis of his experience after an
earthquake in northern Pakistan in 1974,
Spence noted the importance of educating
builders and of designing low-cost engineer-
ing solutions based on local practices and
local materials.
The earthquake problem affects the entire
Indian subcontinent. Sudhir K. Jain (Indian
Institute of Technology, Kanpur) noted the
importance of a legal framework for
accountability and responsibility in the
building industry. He also pointed out the
need to upgrade professional competence
by adding earthquake engineering to univer-
sity curricula, focusing on practical low-cost
engineering solutions with local materials in
underdeveloped countries. Anwaruddin
Ahmed (Geological Survey of Pakistan,
Lahore) showed the necessity of upgrading
seismic zoning maps based on expected
peak ground accelerations.
Surface Trace Mapped
After the meeting, several participants
went to the field with Pakistani colleagues,
including Yeats, Nakata, Yasuo Awata and
Heitaro Kaneda (Geological Survey of Japan,
Tsukuba), and Hiroyuki Tsutsumi (Kyoto
University, Japan) to look for surface rupture;
Petley and Mark Bulmer (Joint Center for
Earth Systems Technology, Baltimore, Md.) to
study landslides; and Spence and Jain to
evaluate damage to structures. Among the
most important findings was evidence for
surface rupture in Balakot, Muzaffarabad,
and along the Jhelum River along a fault
that had evidence of previous Quaternary
displacement (Y. Awata et al., Extensive sur-
face fault rupture associated with the 2005
Pakistan earthquake of Mw 7.6, Japan Union
Geoscience Meeting, 2006; H. Kaneda et al.,
Extensive surface fault rupture associated
with the 2005 Mw 7.6 Pakistan earthquake,
Asia Oceania Geosciences Society Meeting,
2006). Participants noted that ground motion
was very strong in the hanging wall of the
Balakot-Bagh fault, within 100–200 meters of
the surface trace.
Since the earthquake, many Global Posi-
tioning System sites have been established
in the region, the GSP is planning an assess-
ment of active faults, and future collabora-
tion is expected to upgrade seismic net-
works. As for the politically-sensitive Kashmir
region, a conference in Islamabad in May
will specifically address the opportunities for
collaboration between Pakistani and Indian
scientists and engineers.
The International Conference on the Kash-
mir Earthquake in Pakistan was held in
Islamabad on 18–19 January.
References
Armbruster, J., L. Seeber, and K. H. Jacob (1978),The
northwestern termination of the Himalayan Moun-
tain front: Active tectonics from microearthquakes,
J. Geophys. Res., 83(B1), 269–282.
Kausar,A. B.,T. Karim, and T. Khan (2006), Interna-
tional Conference on 8 October 2005 earthquake
in Pakistan: Its implications and hazard mitigation,
extended abstracts, 116 pp., Geol. Surv. of Pakistan,
Quetta.
Nakata,T., H.Tsutsumi, S. H. Khan, and R. D. Lawrence
(1991),Active faults of Pakistan: Map sheets and
inventories, Spec. Publ., 21, 141 pp., Res. Cent. for
Reg. Geogr., Hiroshima Univ., Hiroshima, Japan.
Wallace, K., R. Bilham, F. Blume,V. K. Gaur, and V. Gaha-
laut (2005), Surface deformation in the region
of the 1905 Kangra Mw = 7.8 earthquake in the
period 1846–2001, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L15307,
doi:10.1029/2005GL022906.
—ROBERT S.YEATS, Earth Consultants Interna-
tional and Department of Geosciences, Oregon
State University, Corvallis; E-mail: yeatsr@geo.
oregonstate.edu; ALLAH BAKHSH KAUSAR, Geologi-
cal Survey of Pakistan, Islamabad; TAKASHI NAKATA,
Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Hiro-
shima Institute of Technology, Hiroshima, Japan