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Kinematic Behavior Of Southern Alaska Constrained By Westward Decreasing Postglacial Slip Rates On The Denali Fault, Alaska, A.-S. Mériaux, K. Sieh, R. C. Finkel, Charles M. Rubin, M. H. Taylor, A. J. Meltzner, F. J. Ryerson Mar 2009

Kinematic Behavior Of Southern Alaska Constrained By Westward Decreasing Postglacial Slip Rates On The Denali Fault, Alaska, A.-S. Mériaux, K. Sieh, R. C. Finkel, Charles M. Rubin, M. H. Taylor, A. J. Meltzner, F. J. Ryerson

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Long‐term slip rates for the Denali Fault in southern Alaska are derived using 10Be cosmogenic radionuclide (CRN) dating of offset glacial moraines at two sites. Correction of 10Be CRN model ages for the effect of snow shielding uses historical, regional snow cover data scaled to the site altitudes. To integrate the time variation of snow cover, we included the relative changes in effective wetness over the last 11 ka, derived from lake‐level records and δ 18O variations from Alaskan lakes. The moraine CRN model ages are normally distributed around an average of 12.1 ± 1.0 ka (n …


Analysis Of Shallow Seismicity And Stress Fields In Southeastern Alaska, Hugo Rodriguez Jan 2009

Analysis Of Shallow Seismicity And Stress Fields In Southeastern Alaska, Hugo Rodriguez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Southeastern Alaska is dominated by strike-slip motion along the Queen Charlotte-southern Fairweather fault system (QCFS) in the south and transitions to oblique convergent motion partitioned between strike-slip motion along the Denali and northern Fairweather fault systems and thrusting along faults of the St. Elias region. Geologic complications are further increased by the subduction of the Yakutat microplate beneath North America and glacial processes. By studying regional background seismicity we intend to better determine the current state of stress of southeastern Alaska from the Dixon Entrance to Yakutat Bay. Phase data was gathered for over 4000 earthquakes of depths <20 km and magnitude <5 that occurred from 1973-2005 from Alaskan and Canadian databases. We relocated these earthquakes using the Double-Difference joint hypocenter method. Two areas of interest were identified with high concentrations of seismicity after relocation calculations for the entire southeast Alaska region; Glacier Bay through Yakutat (GBY) and the area surrounding Mt. Ogden (MOG). Earthquake locations in GBY are diffuse with some isolated clusters. The MOG subregion is dominated by a large northeast to southwest trending cluster that trends along the Speel River. We used these relocations and first motion data to estimate the stress fields for earthquake clusters that formed. Only a few of the calculated stress tensors were successful in representing the region's overall tectonic signature. We combined the calculated stress information with GPS, magnetic and gravity data in order determine how plate motion is partitioned in this region and to identify other potentially active faults.