Earthquake Monitoring and Seismic Hazard Mitigation in Balkan Countries




1 Introduction

The Cenozoic South Balkan Extensional System (SBES) lies within southern Bulgaria, Macedonia, eastern Albania, northern Greece and northwestern-most Turkey (Figure 1). Extension within this region began in Paleogene time during the final closure of the Vardar Ocean and subsequent post-collisional deformation. Subsequently the region was directly part of the more regional Aegean extensional realm before the formation of the North Anatolian fault zone in late Miocene/

Pliocene time (Sengor et al., 2004). Since the development of the North Anatolian fault zone the SBES has been partly isolated from the Aegean extensional realm to the south. The Cenozoic history and evolution of the SBES is largely recorded in the abundant sedimentary basins developed in the region (Figure 2).

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