TEHRAN: Direct and indirect dating of the North Tehran Fault in the megacity of Tehran using trapped charge dating methods

• Applicant: Dr. Maryam Heydari
• Subject Area: Geology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 565771895

Tehran, the capital of Iran, is a megacity in constant danger of disastrous earthquakes. While today already sheltering more than 15 million residents, the metropolitan area is still expanding fast over active fault lines. The most important is the North Tehran Fault (NTF), stretching along the northern margin of the city. The NTF has been frequently the centre of attention in debates of future seismic events and yet is still understudied. Our project, TEHRAN, aims to unravel the timing of past seismic activities of the NTF zone using trapped charge dating methods (TCDM) to shed light on its potential future activity. TEHRAN combines different approaches to investigating geological and geomorphological features formed due to past fault movements: (1) Direct dating of past earthquakes through fault gouges by generating the spatial luminescence maps to identify the best sampling location; (2) indirect dating of earthquake-related sedimentary layers using trench excavation; (3) laboratory fault slip simulation and temperature evolution modelling to investigate the signal reset mechanism employed by TCDM. The integration of these parts of the project will shed new light on the temporal and spatial variation of seismic activities of the NTF zone. The main innovation of TEHRAN is the combination of two different dating approaches in conjunction with the modelling of the reset signal mechanism. Together, it will enable us to significantly improve the accuracy and precision of the obtained chronologies and contribute to better hazard projection and mitigation measures.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: China, Iran, Netherlands
• Co-Investigators: Dr. Christoph Grützner; Professorin Dr. Sumiko Tsukamoto
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Jie Chen, Ph.D.; Professor Mohammad R. Ghassemi, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. André Niemeijer