Can earthquakes explain slip on oceanic transform faults?
• Institution: Pacific Geoscience Centre – Sidney, BC • Event: Geophysics Seminars • Date: November 17th, 2004, 16:00:00 • Place: McLennan Physical Laboratories – 60 St. George Street – Room 134 • Group: Geophysics The earthquake rate, average fault slip rate, and the effective seismic thickness have been examined for the oceanic transform faults, bordering the Juan de Fuca plate system. Seismicity statistics are related to the rate of slip along a given fault from earthquakes, using the concept of seismic moment. There are significant sources of uncertainty, due to imperfect earthquake catalogs, use of empirical relations and lack of knowledge of the faults. Nonetheless, this method has been used successfully to provide estimates of deformation in good agreement with those from plate models and GPS observations, showing the soundness of the method and parameters employed, as well as a remarkable consistency in these rates over a significant temporal range from tens to millions of year
