Introduction to the Special Section Earthquakes in Slowly Deforming Mountain Belts and the High Atlas Earthquake of 8 September 2023

Earthquakes in slowly deforming mountain belts result from low tectonic loading and occur on individual fault segments. Although most of the significant seismic strain rate concentrates along the plate boundaries, large earthquakes with Mw > 6 may still be generated along faults in regions at a distance (>> 100 km) from plate boundaries. Intraplate regions or continental interiors show an active deformation characterized by relatively low tectonic and seismic strain rate (< 5 mm/yr., Johnston, 1996), consistent with geodetic strain rates and models of plate motions that predict comparable velocities (Kreemer et al., 2014). Active faults in continental interiors and related paleoseismic records also represent slow strain accumulation that express the occurrence of large earthquakes separated by long period of seismic quiescence (Landgraf et al., 2017).