Seismological observations of the 2012 moment magnitude 8.6 Sumatra earthquake reveal unprecedented complexity of dynamic rupture. The surprisingly large magnitude results from the combination of deep extent, high stress drop, and rupture of multiple faults. Back-projection source imaging indicates that the rupture occurred on distinct planes in an orthogonal conjugate fault system, with relati...

We present a velocity and strain rate model for the northern Walker Lane derived from a compilation of geodetic velocities and corrected for transient effects owing to historic earthquakes on the Central Nevada seismic belt. We fi nd that from 37°N to 40°N, the Walker Lane is characterized by an ~100-km-wide zone with near-constant strain rates associated with ~10 mm yr total motion across the ...

Abstract The Franconian Platform of SE Germany and the underlying Permian Triassic rocks that developed from latest to time were affected by multiple compressional extensional events created a complex fracture, fault stylolite network. We reconstructed spatio-temporal variations post-Triassic palaeostress fields in strata using fault-slip tectonic inversion. Our highly resolved stress inversion...

Taiwan is a young orogenic belt with complex spatial distributions of deformation and earthquakes. We have constructed a three-dimensional finite element model to explore how the interplays between lithospheric structure and plate boundary processes control the distribution of stress and strain rates in the Taiwan region. The model assumes a liberalized power-law rheology and incorporates main ...

On 23 June 2014, the largest intermediate depth earthquake (Mw 7.9) of the last 100 years ruptured within the subducting Pacific plate about 100 km below the Rat Islands archipelago of the Western Aleutian Islands, Alaska. The unusual faulting orientation, strike = 206°, dip = 24°, and rake = 14°, is possibly related to curvature of the underthrust slab and high obliquity of the relative plate ...

Induced earthquakes currently pose a significant hazard in the central United States, but there is considerable uncertainty about the severity of their ground motions. We measure stress drops of 39 moderate-magnitude induced and tectonic earthquakes in the central United States and eastern North America. Induced earthquakes, more than half of which are shallower than 5 km, show a comparable med...

Abstract Most faults in Iceland strike roughly parallel to the divergent plate boundary, a part of North American‐Eurasian which would be expected lead primarily normal faulting. However, several studies have observed significant component rift‐parallel strike‐slip faulting Iceland. To investigate these fault kinematics, we use boundary element method model slip and crustal stress patterns Icel...

This paper is concerned with some aspects of nonuniform stressing above a deep creeping portion of a fault zone prior to a large crust-breaking earthquake. The model that we use involves a slipping crack, representing the deeper, more stably sliding portions of the fault zone, which penetrates upward from depth and is blocked in the lower region of the seismogenic zone. When conditions are unif...

Magnetic anomalies associatedwith new ocean crust formation in the Adare Basin off north-western Ross Sea (43–26Ma) can be traced directly into the Northern Basin that underlies the adjacent morphological continental shelf, implying a continuity in the emplacement of oceanic crust. Steep gravity gradients along the margins of the Northern Basin, particularly in the east, suggest that little ext...

We perform a detailed parameter-space study on properties of yielding zones generated by 2-D in-plane dynamic ruptures on a planar fault with different friction laws and parameters, different initial stress conditions, different rock cohesion values, and different contrasts of elasticity and mass density across the fault. The focus is on cases corresponding to large strike-slip faults having hi...