Deformation of Continental Plate Margin along Consuming Plate Boundaries

Stress Diffusion Along Rupturing Plate Boundaries

An analysis is made of viscoelastic lithosphere/asthenosphere coupling in the time-dependent redistribution of stress along plate boundaries or other seismic lineaments following great earthquakes. The study is based on a generalization by Rice of Elsasser's model of stress-diffusion, i which general elastic plane stress deformations are allowed in lithospheric plates which are coupled in an el...

Balancing the force budget of plate tectonics along the Nazca/South America plate margin

From Continental Drift to Plate Tectonics

SINCE THE l6TH CENTURY, CARTOGRAPHERS HAVE NOTICED THE jigsaw-puzzle fit of the continental edges. Since the 19th century, geologists have known that some fossil plants and animals are extraordinarily similar across the globe, and some sequences of rock formations in distant continents are also strikingly alike. At the turn of the 20th century, Austrian geologist Eduard Suess proposed the theor...

An updated digital model of plate boundaries

[1] A global set of present plate boundaries on the Earth is presented in digital form. Most come from sources in the literature. A few boundaries are newly interpreted from topography, volcanism, and/or seismicity, taking into account relative plate velocities from magnetic anomalies, moment tensor solutions, and/or geodesy. In addition to the 14 large plates whose motion was described by the ...

Mantle Control of Plate Boundary Deformation

The seismic wavefield propagating along the recently instrumented Pacific-North American plate boundary (California) displays remarkable variation, with regional shear waves arriving at coastal stations up to 20 seconds earlier than equidistant stations in eastern California. Broadband modeling of this data reveals that coastal paths sample fast upper mantle typical of Miocene-aged ocean plate ...