[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...

Global Positioning System (GPS) results from networks spanning the Eastern California shear zone and adjacent Sierra Nevada block, occupied annually between 1993 and 1998, constrain plate margin kinematics. We use an elastic block model to relate GPS station velocities to long-term fault slip rate estimates. The model accounts for elastic strain accumulation on the San Andreas fault, as well as...

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 ...

The objective of this paper is to outline the fundamental concepts underlying the estimation of a global strain rate model. We use a variant of the method first introduced by Haines and Holt (1993) to estimate the strain rate tensor field within all of the Earth’s deforming regions. Currently the observables used are ∼1650 geodetic velocities, seismic moment tensors from the Harvard CMT catalog...

[1] A mismatch of elastic properties across a fault induces normal stress changes during spatially nonuniform in-plane slip. Recently, Rudnicki and Rice showed that similar effects follow from a mismatch of poroelastic properties (e.g., permeability) within fluid-saturated fringes of damaged material along the fault walls; in this case, it is pore pressure on the slip plane and hence effective ...

One of the largest historical earthquakes in California occurred in 1872 along the Owens Valley fault located along the western margin of the Eastern California Shear Zone. New paleoseismic and optically stimulated luminescence data are the first to bracket the timing of the pre-1872 rupture to between 3.3 6 0.3 and 3.8 6 0.3 ka. These data yield an earthquake recurrence interval between 4100 a...

Earthquakes normally occur as frictional stick-slip instabilities, resulting in catastrophic failure and seismic rupture. Tectonic faults also fail in slow earthquakes with rupture durations of months or more, yet their origin is poorly understood. Here, we present laboratory observations of repetitive, slow stick-slip in serpentinite fault zones and mechanical evidence for their origin. We doc...

We compute a series of finite-source parameter inversions of the fault rupture of the 2004 Parkfield earthquake based on 1 Hz GPS records only. We confirm that some of the co-seismic slip at shallow depth (<5 km) constrained by InSAR data processing results from early post-seismic deformation. We also show 1) that if located very close to the rupture, a GPS receiver can saturate while it remain...