

@mastersthesis {6855,
	title = {Aspects of continental faulting: {Paleoseismic} earthquake studies and mantle influences on fault localization},
	year = {1994},
	note = {9418988},
	school = {University of Oregon},
	type = {phdPh.{D}.},
	address = {Ann Arbor},
	abstract = {Continental faulting reflects a complex interaction of processes and is studied at a variety of scales. I consider the temporal interaction of faulting at two paleoseismic sites on the southern San Andreas fault in southern California, and the localization of transform faulting by regions of strong upper mantle. The former study grew out of the discovery of a new means to reduce measurement uncertainty when additional information is available relating true values of the unknowns. The latter study followed extensive data compilation and inversion, resulting in a high resolution image of upper mantle velocity structure to 650 km beneath California and western Nevada. Stratigraphic ordering and similarly derived geologic constraints can be applied with Bayes theorem to reduce radiocarbon dating uncertainty. This approach achieved 59\% average variance reduction of calendric date distributions by stratigraphic super-position alone and 85\% by also using sedimentological and historical constraints. Bayesian methods applied to earthquake dating at the Wrightwood and Pallett Creek paleoseismic sites reduced date uncertainty to the point that interaction in event recurrence between sites was resolved. Estimates of the conditional probability of a future major event will be too small if this interaction is neglected. The nature of the interaction suggests that the local stress state may only mediate the probability that rupture passes through a site, and that the first-order influences on the probability of an earthquake may be stress or strength conditions remote from the local stress regime. California and western Nevada upper mantle is imaged by teleseismic tomography. Temperature scaling of velocity anomalies as small as 1\% predicts order of magnitude contrasts in effective viscosity. Strike slip faults concentrate at the edges of high velocity, apparently strong regions. Displacement on faults at high angles to velocity boundaries typically dies out as though pinned by strength. Imaging also resolves the geometry of post-20 Ma subduction west of the California margin as being similar to that seen today in Cascadia. Laramide-age slab imaged beneath the Sierra Nevada protected the late Cenozoic slab from heating, so slab-borne water was not released. This appears to explain the notable lack of arc volcanism in central California.},
	keywords = {0372:Geology, 0373:Geophysics, Earth sciences, Geology, Geophysics},
	url = {http://search.proquest.com/docview/304106615?accountid=14270},
	author = {Biasi, Glenn Paul}
}
