The brittle portion of the Earth’s lithosphere contains a distribution of joints, faults and cataclastic zones that exist on a wide range of scale-lengths and usually have complex geometries including bends, jogs, and intersections. The material around these complexities is subjected to large stress concentrations, which lead during continuing deformation to the generation of new fracture and g...

Western Aphrodite Terra, Venus, is characterized by a series of parallel linear structural discontinuities 2000-4000 km in length and 100-200 km wide, which strike at high angles to the general topographic trend of the Aphrodite Terra highlands. The broad characteristics of the cross-strike discontinuities (CSDs) are similar to both strike-slip fault zones and terrestrial oceanic fracture zones...

Abstract Strike-slip faults can be nonplanar in both their strike and dip dimensions. While a large body of work has investigated the effects changes on earthquake rupture arrest, no previous studies have role along-strike variations strike-slip ruptures. Here, I use three-dimensional finite-element method to conduct dynamic simulations ruptures with linear surface traces along strike. experime...

Tectonic motion across the Los Angeles region is distributed across an intricate network of strike-slip and thrust faults that will be released in destructive earthquakes similar to or larger than the 1933 M6.4 Long Beach and 1994 M6.7 Northridge events. Here we show that Los Angeles regional thrust, strike-slip, and oblique faults are connected and move concurrently with measurable surface def...

We have conducted a paleoseismic investigation of serial fault rupture at one site along the 110-km rupture of the North Anatolian fault that produced the Mw 7.4 earthquake of 17 August 1999. The benefit of using a recent rupture to compare serial ruptures lies in the fact that the location, magnitude, and slip vector of the most recent event are all very well documented. We wished to determine...

[1] Radiating shear and Rayleigh waves from supershear ruptures form Mach waves that transmit large-amplitude ground motion and stresses to locations far from the fault. We simulate bilateral ruptures on a finite-width vertical strike-slip fault (of width W and half-length L with L W) breaking the surface of an elastic half-space, and focus on the wavefield out to distances comparable to L. At ...

[1] We use data from campaign and continuous GPS sites in southeast Alaska and the neighboring region of Canada to constrain a regional tectonic block model that estimates block angular velocities and derives a self‐consistent set of fault slip rates from the block motions. Present‐day tectonics in southeast Alaska is strongly influenced by the collision of the Yakutat block. Our model predicts...

Precise factors controlling the coevolution of deformation and topography in tectonically active landscapes remain poorly understood due to complex feedbacks between numerous possible variables. Here we examine the links between fault kinematics, emergent topography, and environmental factors on a global data set of active fault-driven mountain ranges (n = 41). Using simple regressions between ...

We examine the long-period near-source ground motions from simulations of M 7.4 events on a strike-slip fault using kinematic ruptures with rupture speeds that range from subshear speeds through intersonic speeds to supersonic speeds. The strong along-strike shear-wave directivity present in scenarios with subshear rupture speeds disappears in the scenarios with ruptures propagating faster than...