Constancy of Geologic and Geodetic Fault Slip Rates Across the Arabia‐Eurasia Collision Revealed Through Two Decades of Observation

Abstract Whether the decadal accumulation of strain across active faults is representative of the long‐term rate of fault slip is a central and unresolved issue within active tectonics and earthquake science and is an issue of societal as well as academic interest. Significant variability in slip rate is often reported, and there is remaining uncertainty in the transferability between the two timescales of measurement. In this study, we examine the active fault systems across Iran, a region that is deforming due to the ongoing continental collision between Arabia and Eurasia. We compile all existing geological slip rates on strike‐slip faults within the region and compile/determine geodetic rates across the faults from GNSS networks and, in a few cases, from InSAR‐derived velocity fields. When the data set is taken as a whole we find agreement between the geological and decadal measurements, showing no resolvable differences in rate as averaged over decadal, Holocene (10 ka), and late Pleistocene (10–100 ka) time periods, with outliers from this trend likely resulting either from methodological limitations in individual studies or from assumptions of the age of offset landform features, which tend to underestimate the fault rate. Our study confirms that decadal measurements of strain accumulation are representative of long‐term accumulation of fault slip, at least within the uncertainties of our measurements in the Iranian plateau.