Earthquake hazard from 36-Cl exposure dating of elapsed time and Coulomb stress transfer
Principal Investigator: Dr. R Phillips
Sponsor: NERC
Value:
Dates: 01.02.2012 to 31.01.2015
Summary: Active faults experience earthquake rupture due to stress transfer from neighbouring earthquakes only if the fault in question is close to its failure stress. Since we lack knowledge of which faults are close to failure it is not possible interpret calculations of stress transfer in terms of the probability of impending earthquakes. We propose, for an active normal fault system in Abruzzo, central Italy, to measure the elapsed time since the last earthquake normalised to fault slip-rates using in situ 36Cl cosmogenic isotope dating, because this is a proxy for how close a fault is to its failure stress.
We will combine this with calculations of stress transfer from both historical and palaeoseismic earthquakes in order to calculate which faults within have the highest probability of rupture.