Active Faults on the Satellite Image of Azerbaijan Province, Northwestern Iran

Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran is one of the hypersaline lakes of world. In the Urmia region a Cenozoic island arc was formed by northeastward subduction of Neo-Tethyan oceanic plate beneath central Iran; the lake is therefore located in the fore-arc basin tectonic setting. Satellite imagery of the Urmia region illustrates that the trend of faults are in two main NE-SW and NW-SE directions. The morphology of Urmia Lake is controlled by these two fault systems, one is sub parallel to the strike of the Zagros Thrust System and the other in a perpendicular NE-SW direction with both fault systems belonging to two different generations. The strike-slip faults at the Urmia region were active in two phases surrounding Urmia from north, south and west. The first phase are old generation faults which aligned NE-SW trend. The second is new generated and active one as result of opening of Red Sea and movement of Arabian plate toward central Iranian microplate. The new generated structures are affected by the maximum stress field in NEE-SWW trend, causing seismic events after Cretaceous by present and are associated with collision between the Arabian plate and the Eurasian plate from early Tertiary to the present.