Thermal springs commonly occur along faults because of the enhanced vertical permeability afforded by fracture zones. Field and laboratory studies of fault zone materials document substantial heterogeneities in fracture permeabilities. Modeling and field studies of springs suggest that spatial variations in permeability strongly influence spring locations, discharge rates and temperatures. The ...

The 2011 Tohoku earthquake (Mw 9.0) produced a very large slip on the shallow part of a megathrust fault that resulted in destructive tsunamis. Although multiple causes of such large slip at shallow depths are to be expected, the frictional property of sediments around the fault, particularly at coseismic slip velocities, may significantly contribute to large slip along such faults. We have thu...

We applied a tomographic method to image an aseismic strike–slip fault in North Morocco and found that the occurrence of earthquakes is not only controlled by the state of tectonic stress but also by material heterogeneity in the crust. We have constructed an integrated model of seismic, electric, magnetic and heat flow properties across northeastern Morocco primarily based on a tomography inve...

The Eşen Basin is a ca. 30 km long and 15 km wide, NNE-SSW trending young graben which is located in SW Turkey between the Isparta Angle and the Western Anatolian Extensional Province (Fig. 3). The basin has a key position in the south-western part of the Fethiye-Burdur Fault Zone (FBFZ), which is a presumed strike-slip zone with faults that run through numerous small cities and villages. There...

Mani Earthquake, occurred on Nov. 8, 1997 in Tibet, China, is the strongest event in China since 90’s in 20 century. Investigation and research of its principle and geometry, dynamics related to surface rupture zone is very significant to analyze the development and evolution of China’s earthquake in the future. In this study, we investigate the distribution of surface deformation and extract d...

We report on measurements of residual stress up to 300 MPa with a microfocused synchrotron X-ray beam in quartz fragments in a cataclasite from the damage zone of the San Andreas fault, California (USA). Samples were extracted from the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth drill core at a depth of 2.7 km. Stresses were derived from lattice distortions observed on Laue diffraction images. These...

In this paper, the mechanism of fault pressurization in rapid slip events is analyzed on the basis of a complete characterization of the thermo-poro-mechanical behavior of a clayey gouge extracted at 760m depth in Aigion fault in the active seismic zone of the Gulf of Corinth, Greece. It is shown that the thermally collapsible character of this clayey gouge can be responsible for a dramatic red...