Why Iraq is slowly retreating into the world?

Iraq is going downhill.

To be more precise, the region in the northern part of the country encircling the Zagros Mountains.

Scientists say northern Iraq is being pulled down by a sinking oceanic "slab" beneath the planet's surface.

But this is not a sinkhole where you can see entire patches of land, hills and trees disappear before your eyes: Koshnaw, who grew up in Erbil, Iraq, and is the lead author of a study of the motion of the tectonic plates under the Zagros Mountains published in the journal Solid Earth, said the processes involved “are very, very slow, on the human time scale. ”

He said that “the results of these processes cannot be felt immediately”—millions of years are involved.

What is causing the Iraqi region to sink?

It's plate tectonics, to put it briefly.

The Neotethys oceanic slab that runs along the Arabian and Eurasian continental plates is tearing more and more. It is separating from southeast Turkey to northwest Iran, where it was the floor of an ancient ocean more than 66 million years ago. It is now sinking into Earth’s mantle.

A team of researchers led by Koshnaw from the Universities of Göttingen in Germany and Bern in Switzerland looked at the region around the Zagros Mountains. The depressions around the Zagros Mountains are deeper than one would expect from the area's moderate climate, so they wanted to see what happens to the underlying oceanic slab when two continental plates collide.

A team led by Koshnaw from the Universities of Göttingen in Germany and Bern in Switzerland looked at the region surrounding the Zagros Mountains. The depressions around the Zagros Mountains are deeper than one would expect from the region's moderate topography, so they wanted to find out what happens to the underlying oceanic slab when two continental plates collide.

These collisions created today's mountain ranges, like the Zagros. Through deep-earth imaging and rock records, the researchers determined that the Neotethys slab is sinking and swallowing up the Iraqi Zagros region.

How might this research aid in the prediction of earthquakes?

The results “tell us what is going on in our planet, and that has some practical implications.

“This research shows that our planet is dynamic and that its interior and exterior are linked.”