The existence of active faults near large cities poses significant risk to the life and property of its inhabitants as well as to its public infrastructure. Here, we investigate the interplay between seismicity, active faulting, and interseismic strain accumulation within a radius of ∼50 km from the metropolitan area of Athens, the capital of Greece. We find that during the period 2011–2018, a total of 4722 earthquakes were recorded, the majority of which had local magnitudes <3.0 with only four events being of moderate magnitude (⁠ML 4.1–4.3). Precise relative locations with horizontal and vertical errors of ≤1 and 2 km, respectively, were obtained for 2666 of these events using the double‐difference algorithm. Earthquake relocation was compared to the surface traces of 31 active and 49 “less‐active” normal faults drawn from high‐resolution (⁠∼5 m pixel size) digital elevation models and complemented by analysis of geodetic data from 30 permanent Global Positioning System (GPS) stations. Joint analysis of these datasets suggests that microseismicity mostly clusters along the “less‐active” faults, whereas the faults associated with impressive postglacial scarps (indicating recent activity) and historic seismicity are mostly quiet. Interestingly, GPS data indicate that both fault types currently accumulate elastic strain that ranges from 0.5 to 2.3 mm/yr. Based on their estimated rupture area, more than half of the recorded faults (⁠N=54⁠) are capable of generating earthquakes with moment magnitudes between 6.0 and 6.6. Although some of these sources are characterized by impressive postglacial scarps, many others have long earthquake recurrence intervals (i.e., have not ruptured during the past ∼16 ka⁠) and are associated with intense microseismicity and elastic strain accumulation, calling for future investigations on their seismogenic potential.

中文翻译：

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希腊雅典市区附近的地震活动断层

大城市附近活动断层的存在对其居民的生命和财产以及公共基础设施构成重大风险。在这里，我们研究了距希腊首都雅典大都市区约50 km半径内的地震活动性，活动断层和地震间应变累积之间的相互作用。我们发现，在2011-2018年期间，总共记录了4722次地震，其中大多数地震的局部烈度<3.0，只有四个中度地震（ML 4.1-4.3）。使用双差算法，针对2666个这些事件获得了水平和垂直误差分别≤1 km和2 km的精确相对位置。将地震迁移与从高分辨率（？5 m像素大小）数字高程模型绘制的31个活动和49个“非活动”正常断层的表面迹线进行了比较，并通过分析来自30个永久性全球定位系统的大地测量数据进行了补充（ GPS）站。对这些数据集的联合分析表明，微地震活动大多沿“活动较少”的断层聚集，而与令人印象深刻的冰川后陡坡（表明近期活动）和历史地震活动相关的断层则大多是安静的。有趣的是，GPS数据表明，这两种断层类型当前累积的弹性应变范围为0.5至2.3 mm / yr。根据其估计的破裂区域，超过一半的记录断层（N =54⁠）能够产生矩量在6.0到6.6之间的地震。