Strain and Velocity Across the Great Basin Derived From 15‐ka Fault Slip Rates: Implications for Continuous Deformation and Seismic Hazard in the Walker Lane, California‐Nevada, USA

Abstract

Whether intracontinental deformation is best described by motion of effectively rigid blocks sliding past one another on discrete faults or as a continuum is a widely discussed question in tectonics. These two views are not entirely in opposition because the relative movements of a large number of small blocks resembles a deforming continuum. The underlying debate, therefore, rests on the role of faults in the shallow, brittle crust. Knowledge of the length of a fault helps determine the maximum magnitude of an earthquake on the fault, and the slip rate on a fault helps determine the average recurrence interval of such an earthquake. Therefore, a description of the deformation field in terms of faults and blocks is useful for earthquake hazard assessment, but offers little help in understanding the dynamic processes that govern large-scale deformation. Treating intracontinental deformation as a continuum enables the kinematics of deformation to be understood in terms of dynamics.

Surface faulting earthquake clustering controlled by fault and shear-zone interactions

“…The strain-rates were averaged over a time period (15 ± 3 ka) longer than the timescale of clustered slip. The correlation takes the form of a power law, where strain-rate, _ ε is related to the elevation, h, in the form _ ε ∝ h n , with n = 3.26 (a similar exponent value was determined for the extensional Walker Lane zone in the USA 21 ). These authors 18 considered that h contributes to the differential stresses driving the deformation, alongside tectonic forcing, because h contributes to the vertical stress.…”

Recovering Surface Slip Distribution Along the Sertengshan Piedmont Fault (Northern China) From Airborne LiDAR Data

“…However, the COPD peaks do not always decay exponentially as commonly observed for strike‐slip faults in our study (e.g., Figure 6 for segment 1 and Figure 8 for segment 3). This is probably because the evidences of offsets on strike‐slip faults are more likely to be erased from the landscape than those on dip‐slip faults (Reitman & Molnar, 2021). On strike‐slip faults, the offsets are generally acquired from stream channels that can abandon or reconnect to other channels.…”

Initiation of Clockwise Rotation and Eastward Transport of Southeastern Tibet Inferred from Deflected Fault Traces and GPS Observations

“…The reliance on just two dimensionless numbers allows their ranges of values to be explored, and for their roles in large scale deformation to be revealed and assessed (e.g., England and Houseman, 1986;Houseman and England, 1986). Comparisons of large-scale deformation from essentially all regions of large-scale deformation show patterns of deformation that can be matched by treating the continental lithosphere as a thin viscous sheet: eastern Asia (England and Houseman, 1986;England and Molnar, 1997;Flesch et al, 2001;Holt and Haines, 1993;Holt et al, 1991); Iran (Walters et al, 2017); Anatolia (England et al, 2016), and western North America (Bahadori et al, 2018;Flesch et al, 2000;Reitman and Molnar, 2021;Whitehouse et al, 2005). Moreover, strain-rate fields measured at the surface using GPS match those implied by seismic anisotropy in the underlying mantle, which suggests vertically coherent deformation through the lithosphere (e.g., Chang et al, 2015;Davis et al, 1997;Flesch et al, 2005;Holt, 2000).…”