Active faults in the Eastern hemisphere.

The Project ‘‘World Map of Major Active Faults’’ was initiated in 1989 and was approved by the International Lithosphere Commission in 1990 under the chairmanship of Vladimir G. Trifonov (Russia) as Project II-2 of the International Lithosphere Program (ILP). The Project was supported by UNESCO as a contribution of the ILP to the UN International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction. In 1991, the Project was separated for better management into two sub-projects including correspondingly representatives from the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Dr. M.S. Machette (USGS, Denver, USA) was approved as a co-chairman for the Western Hemisphere sub-project. Because knowledge of location, parameters and contemporary behavior of active faults is important and even necessary not only for studying recent geodynamics and rock deformation, but also for estimating various natural hazards and especially seismic ones, the ILP Project II-2 was included in 1993 in the ILP Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program