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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Geophysics and Seismology

University of Texas at El Paso

Theses/Dissertations

Alaska

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Seismic Analysis Of The 30 July 1972 Sitka Earthquake Aftershocks, Stress Drop Of Aftershocks In Cook Strait, New Zealand Following The 2013 Cook Strait And Lake Grassmere And 2016 Kaikoura Earthquakes, And 2d Seismic Tomography In The Brady Hot Springs Geothermal Site, Nevada, Juan Alejandro Ochoa Chavez Jan 2019

Seismic Analysis Of The 30 July 1972 Sitka Earthquake Aftershocks, Stress Drop Of Aftershocks In Cook Strait, New Zealand Following The 2013 Cook Strait And Lake Grassmere And 2016 Kaikoura Earthquakes, And 2d Seismic Tomography In The Brady Hot Springs Geothermal Site, Nevada, Juan Alejandro Ochoa Chavez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The 1972 Mw 7.6 Sitka earthquake is the largest earthquake to have occurred along the Alaska portion of the Queen Charlotte fault (QCF) in historic time. The QCF system forms the plate boundary between the Pacific and North American plates within southeastern Alaska and has accumulated enough slip since 1972 to produce a comparable sized event in the near future. Thus, it is important to better understand the controls on the rupture process of the 1972 mainshock and its aftershocks. Following the mainshock the U.S. Geological Survey installed a network of 11 portable seismographs that recorded over 200 aftershocks of …


Software Development For A Three-Dimensional Gravity Inversion And Application To Study Of The Border Ranges Fault System, South-Central Alaska, Rolando Cardenas Jan 2011

Software Development For A Three-Dimensional Gravity Inversion And Application To Study Of The Border Ranges Fault System, South-Central Alaska, Rolando Cardenas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Border Ranges Fault System (BRFS) bounds the Cook Inlet and Susitna Basins, an important petroleum province within south-central Alaska. A primary goal in the research is to test several plausible models of structure along the Border Ranges Fault System using a novel three-dimensional inversion utilizing gravity and magnetic data, constrained with other geophysical, borehole and surface geological information. This research involves the development of inversion modeling software using a Borland C++ compiler as part of the Rapid Application Development (RAD) Studio. The novel inversion approach directly models known geology, and "a priori" uncertainties on the geologic model to allow …


Seismological Studies In South-Central Alaska And Northern Mexico, Oscar Mario Romero De La Cruz Jan 2011

Seismological Studies In South-Central Alaska And Northern Mexico, Oscar Mario Romero De La Cruz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The work in this study is focused on two different areas, south-central Alaska and northern Mexico. In the first study area, I calculated dynamic stress drops for moderate sized earthquakes and performed receiver function analyses. The goal of the stress drop studies was to determine if events occurring within the more strongly coupled portion of the subducting slab have higher stress drops. My results shows that higher stress drops correspond to the locked and strongly coupled region in Prince William Sound, and lower stress drops are associated with the Cook Inlet region, a zone of relaxation of the plate interface. …


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.