Not one, but two! Amanda Thomas (2005), a PhD student at UC Berkeley and Danny Brothers (2003), a PhD student at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, have each recently had their work published in nature. Congratulations to both Amanda and Danny!
Amanda and her colleagues have identified a robust correlation between extremely small, tidally induced shear stress parallel to the San Andreas fault and non-volcanic tremor activity near Parkfield, California. They suggest that this tremor represents shear failure on a critically stressed fault in the presence of near-lithostatic pore pressure. There are a number of similarities between tremor in subduction zone environments, such as Cascadia and Japan, and tremor on the deep San Andreas transform, suggesting that the results may also be applicable in other tectonic settings.
Read the full abstract.
Danny and his colleagues have linked historical earthquakes on the southern section of California's famed San Andreas fault to ancient floods from the nearby Colorado River."We found quakes happened about every 100 to 200 years and were correlated with floods," says Brothers. "The Colorado River spills, loads the crust and then there is a rupture." Read about this work
on the web or the
full abstract.
May 5th, 2010