Micrometre-scale deformation observations reveal fundamental controls on geological rifting
Many of the world’s largest volcanic eruptions are associated with geological rifting where major fractures open at the Earth’s surface, yet fundamental controls on the near-surface response to the rifting process are lacking. New high resolution observations gleaned from seismometer data during the...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5101494 2023-05-15T16:49:34+02:00 Micrometre-scale deformation observations reveal fundamental controls on geological rifting Thun, Johannes Lokmer, Ivan Bean, Christopher J. Eibl, Eva P. S. Bergsson, Bergur H. Braiden, Aoife 2016-11-09 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5101494/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27827417 https://doi.org/10.1038/srep36676 en eng Nature Publishing Group http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5101494/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27827417 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep36676 Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ CC-BY Article Text 2016 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/srep36676 2016-11-20T01:11:41Z Many of the world’s largest volcanic eruptions are associated with geological rifting where major fractures open at the Earth’s surface, yet fundamental controls on the near-surface response to the rifting process are lacking. New high resolution observations gleaned from seismometer data during the 2014 Bárðarbunga basaltic dyke intrusion in Iceland allow us unprecedented access to the associated graben formation process on both sub-second and micrometre scales. We find that what appears as quasi steady-state near-surface rifting on lower resolution GPS observation comprises discrete staccato-like deformation steps as the upper crust unzips through repetitive low magnitude (MW < 0) failures on fracture patches estimated between 300 m2 and 1200 m2 in size. Stress drops for these events are one to two orders of magnitude smaller than expected for tectonic earthquakes, demonstrating that the uppermost crust in the rift zone is exceptionally weak. Text Iceland PubMed Central (PMC) Scientific Reports 6 1 |
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Article Thun, Johannes Lokmer, Ivan Bean, Christopher J. Eibl, Eva P. S. Bergsson, Bergur H. Braiden, Aoife Micrometre-scale deformation observations reveal fundamental controls on geological rifting |
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Article |
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Many of the world’s largest volcanic eruptions are associated with geological rifting where major fractures open at the Earth’s surface, yet fundamental controls on the near-surface response to the rifting process are lacking. New high resolution observations gleaned from seismometer data during the 2014 Bárðarbunga basaltic dyke intrusion in Iceland allow us unprecedented access to the associated graben formation process on both sub-second and micrometre scales. We find that what appears as quasi steady-state near-surface rifting on lower resolution GPS observation comprises discrete staccato-like deformation steps as the upper crust unzips through repetitive low magnitude (MW < 0) failures on fracture patches estimated between 300 m2 and 1200 m2 in size. Stress drops for these events are one to two orders of magnitude smaller than expected for tectonic earthquakes, demonstrating that the uppermost crust in the rift zone is exceptionally weak. |
format |
Text |
author |
Thun, Johannes Lokmer, Ivan Bean, Christopher J. Eibl, Eva P. S. Bergsson, Bergur H. Braiden, Aoife |
author_facet |
Thun, Johannes Lokmer, Ivan Bean, Christopher J. Eibl, Eva P. S. Bergsson, Bergur H. Braiden, Aoife |
author_sort |
Thun, Johannes |
title |
Micrometre-scale deformation observations reveal fundamental controls on geological rifting |
title_short |
Micrometre-scale deformation observations reveal fundamental controls on geological rifting |
title_full |
Micrometre-scale deformation observations reveal fundamental controls on geological rifting |
title_fullStr |
Micrometre-scale deformation observations reveal fundamental controls on geological rifting |
title_full_unstemmed |
Micrometre-scale deformation observations reveal fundamental controls on geological rifting |
title_sort |
micrometre-scale deformation observations reveal fundamental controls on geological rifting |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5101494/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27827417 https://doi.org/10.1038/srep36676 |
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Iceland |
genre_facet |
Iceland |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5101494/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27827417 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep36676 |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.1038/srep36676 |
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