Tectonophysical Zoning of Active Faults in the Altai‒Western Sayan Region: Identification of Locations for Preparation of Strong Earthquakes

Tectonophysical zoning of active faults according to the level of Coulomb stresses for the Altai‒Western Sayan region has been performed. The source of stress data is earthquake focal mechanisms and a modified algorithm for cataclastic analysis of discontinuous faults, implemented in the new computer program STRESSseism_v.3.0. Based stress reconstruction results, the kinematic types of regional faults and angles of their dip in the upper crust (5‒15 km) have been refined. Five zones have been identified with fault systems having a high level of Coulomb stresses with the length of hazardous fault sections exceeding 50‒70 km. The result is considered a deterministic long-term prediction of the preparation zones for strong earthquakes with magnitudes Mw ≥ 6.5‒7.0 and possibly higher.