Tectonic fault line that runs through Ladakh not inactive as was thought, moving north: Study

Tectonic fault line that runs through Ladakh not inactive as was thought, moving north: Study

The study was conducted in Ladakh from the north of Ladakh’s capital, Leh, to the Tso Moriri lake, a distance of 213 kilometres. A low-intensity earthquake in 2010 near the village of Upshi in Ladakh, which falls on the fault line, can now be attributed to a thrust rupture, the study said. A RECENT survey has found that a tectonic fault line that runs through Ladakh, all along the Indus river, is not inactive as was previously thought and is, in fact, moving northward. The study by the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun, found that the fault line, the Indus Suture Zone (ISZ), is not “locked” and is tectonically active. “While the frontal and central parts of the Himalayas — the Shivaliks, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Sikkim — are still known to be active and moving, the current understanding about the Ladakh region is that it was locked. Our survey has found that this is actually not the case and that the plate is still tectonically active. The fault …