Journal Title:

Crustal Deformation Study in Peninsula Malaysia using Global Positioning System

Outline of Journal: In a few decades South East Asia has been a target research by a number of scientists. Peninsula Malaysia is believed to be situated at the relative stable continent with low seismic activity. The tectonic setting of Peninsula Malaysia shows that Peninsula Malaysia is divided into two tectonic blocks; the west block known as SIBUMASU and the east block known as EAST MALAYA. The Sibumasu block covers the most west coast of Peninsula Malaysia until half of Sumatra Island. The East Malaya block covers from the middle of Peninsula Malaysia until the east coast. Peninsula Malaysia also has a few major faults such as BAUBAK, KUALA LUMPUR, BUKIT TINGGI, RAUB-BENTONG, LEPAR, LEBIR, and MERSING. In December 2004, there was a giant earthquake occurred near Aceh (Sumatra) which gave big geological impact to Peninsula Malaysia and turn it into irregular form. From the available GPS measurement, it showed that the motion of Peninsula Malaysia extremely changes from clockwise into un-clockwise direction. These have caused deformation and activation of the faults in Peninsula Malaysia. On the other hand, there were some phenomena was recorded in Peninsula Malaysia such as sink hole in Ipoh and Batu Gajah, tremors in Bukit Tinggi area since November, 2007 until January, 2008 (Science Council Japan and tremor at Jerantut, 2009, which is believed as the manifest of the fault reactivations. There fore further research must be carried out to investigate the crustal deformation especially the activation faults in Peninsula Malaysia.