Earthquakes
The Structure Tectonics Team @ ANU
chosen from the CMT data
The processes associated with earthquakes are of great interest to Structural Geology and Tectonics, since it is important to understand the link between long term movements in the Earth and the short term and quite fast movements that take place during catastrophic earthquakes.
In order to see if we can bring some new light on some of these processes, we have begun analysing the geometrical information that can be obtained by study of the earthquake catalogues:
1) the NEIC data sets
2) the Global CMT datasets
3) the Engdahl datasets.
Some of this information has been assimilated in the construction of a 3D Virtual Earth, providing details of the 3D geometry of the subducitng slabs.
Some of this information is used by the program eQuakes, to analyse fault geometries that can be inferred from earthquake centroid moment tensors, as well as 3D spatial distributions.
PDE (Preliminary Determination of Epicentres) solution is provided by the USGS National Earthquake Information Centre, and can be determined rapidly.
CMT solutions (Centroid Moment Tensors) take a little longer, but they can be more accurate, and provide more information.
For information on the Padang Earthquake - press here.