Seismological data from recent subduction earthquakes suggest that megathrust earthquakes induce transient stress changes in the upper plate that shift accretionary wedges into an unstable state. These stress changes have, however, never been linked to geological structures preserved in fossil accretionary complexes. The importance of coseismically induced wedge failure has therefore remained l...

[1] Topographic profiles across a lobate fault scarp on Mercury have been used to constrain the depth of faulting to 30–40 km. Here we use this depth to place constraints on the crustal thickness and heat flow into the base of the crust. With no crustal heat production, the mantle heat flux on Mercury at the time of scarp formation was 30–50 mWm . However, higher crustal heat production rates a...

Goff comments that faulting is important for creation of abyssal hills and is the dominant process at slow-spreading ridges. We respond that faulting is indeed important but cannot alone explain the bathymetric signal predicted by our models and observed at the Australian-Antarctic Ridge. We show that for intermediate- to fast-spreading ridges, abyssal hill spacing is consistent with the period...

Tectonic implications of subcrustal, normal faulting earthquakes in the western Shikoku region have been investigated in sorme detail, mainly based on the faulting mechanism of the Bungo channel earthquake of August 6, 1968 (M=6.6, h=45km) and its aftershocks. A synthetic study of the focal mechanism solution, spatial distribution of aftershocks, seismic waves observed in the near and far field...

Recent observations on the dynamics of crack and fault rupture are described, together with related theory and simulations in the framework of continuum elastodynamics. Topics include con gurational instabilities of tensile crack fronts (crack front waves, disordering, sidebranching), the connection between frictional slip laws and modes of rupture propagation in earth faulting, especially cond...

ConUtriuUing subject-maner experts and reviewers Included: Bill Arnold PA SZ flow issues Scott Bennett WPD Waste package and design-related FEPs Jim Houseworth UZ UZ flow issues and fracture-related FEPs Dwayne Kicker Repository Modeling Rockfall-related FEPs Dennis O'Leary USGS Faulting-related and tectonic-related FEPs Carl Stepp Site Integration Tectonic-related, faulting-related, and seismi...

We use more than 5000 crossings of magnetic anomalies and fracture zones along the Carlsberg and Central Indian ridges to examine whether the onset of widespread reverse faulting at ~ 8 Ma in the Central Indian Basin was accompanied by a significant change in India–Capricorn motion, whether the onset of this faulting represented the initiation of motion between these two plates, and whether the...

We examined the spatial relationship between seismicity and upper crustal structure in the Wakayama region, northwestern Kii Peninsula, Japan, by investigating microearthquake focal mechanisms and the local stress field. The focal mechanisms of most events studied fall into three categories: (1) normal faulting with N–S-oriented T-axes mainly occurring at shallow depths, (2) reverse faulting wi...

Seismic hazard in continental rifts varies as a function of strain accommodation by tectonic or magmatic processes. The nature of faulting in the Sevier Desert, located in eastern Basin and Range of central Utah, and how this faulting relates to the Sevier Desert Detachment low-angle normal fault, have been debated for nearly four decades. Here, we show that the geodetic signal of extension acr...

[1] Mars Orbiter Laser Altimetry (MOLA) data have been used to characterize lobate scarps along the dichotomy boundary in the eastern hemisphere of Mars. These structures are the surface expression of thrust faulting of the southern highlands. Displacement on the thrust faults is generally less than 1 km except in the case of the Amenthes Rupes thrust fault, where the maximum displacement is on...