SEISMOTECTONICS IN THE AEGEAN REGION

We present a review of the seismicity and focal mechanisms for the Aegean (historical, teleseismically- and microseismically-computed) that we compare with the recent active faults. Some recently active faults (mostly the NW-SE striking faults that are. located west of the Aegean sea) are not associated with seismicity. some seismicity is associated with new EW striking faults of modest displacement that arc mostly seen in Continental Greece.- We suggest that, due to the important amount of internal deformation of the Aegean lithosphere and the inferred rotations, the localization of the deformation changes with time and a precise timing of the recent faults activity is necessary to correlate with present-day def'ormauon. We also suggest that, for continental crust, the work to create new faults that strike perpendicular to the main strain direction (as deduced from focal mechanisms and GPS measurements) is less than the work to reactivate faults that strike obliquely to the strain direction.