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Published May 15, 1965 | Published
Journal Article Open

Displacements, strains, and tilts at teleseismic distances

Press, Frank

Abstract

The dislocation theory representation of faulting of Vvedenskaya, Steketee, Chinnery, and Maruyama is used to compute the residual displacement, strain, and tilt fields at intermediate and large distances from major earthquakes. It is shown that the distant fields are large enough to be detected by modern instruments. The vertical displacement field from the Alaskan earthquake of March 27, 1964, indicates that the primary fault extended to a depth of 150 to 200 km and that it probably came to within 15 km of the surface. The residual strain observed at Hawaii amounted to 10^(−8), a value which is reasonably consistent with the extent of faulting and the displacements near the source. The elastic strain energy release was about 10^(25) ergs. Other observations of residual strains and tilts are examined. In some cases nonfaulting sources are probably involved. In other cases the observations may be a spurious manifestation of instrumental hysteresis. The Mindlin‐Cheng catalog of fields from various nuclei of strain in a half‐space offers a convenient way to derive residual displacements from diverse sources, including those of Chinnery and Maruyama.

Additional Information

© 1965 by the American Geophysical Union. Manuscript received January 21, 1965; revised March 5, 1965. I have benefited from many discussions with Drs. Stewart Smith, Hugo Benioff, Ari Ben-Menahem, and Don Anderson. Dr. Shawn Biehler generously adapted his automatic plotting routine for use in this paper. Dr. Keiiti Aki and Mr. George Plafker made their studies of the Alaskan earthquake available in advance of publication. Messrs. Ronald Viets, Robert Eppley, and Robert Munson of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey station at Kipapa provided valuable assistance in operating the strain seismograph for us. Lawrence Turnbull checked the calculations. I am grateful to Drs. Hugo Benioff, M. A. Chinnery, K. Aki, and M. Major for constructive comments on the paper. Dr. Aki mentioned a study which I have not yet seen by Dr. I. Ozawa of Kyoto University in which a similar conclusion about the reality of strain jumps is reached. This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant GP-2806. Contribution 1309, Division of Geological Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

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