US EditionScientists Find Deep Earthquake Faults Can Heal in Hours
UC Davis researchers show quartz grains weld rapidly under high pressure and temperature, restoring fault strength within hours after slow slip, impacting earthquake cycle models.
- On Nov. 19, University of California, Davis researchers Amanda Thomas and James Watkins reported deep earthquake faults can heal within hours after slow slip events in a study supported by the National Science Foundation and published in Science Advances.
- Replicating slow slip, the team subjected powdered quartz in silver cylinders to 1 Gigapascal and 500 degrees Celsius, finding quartz grains rapidly fuse and cohesion restores strength.
- They measured sound-wave speeds through heated samples and used electron microscopy, while seismic records from the Cascadia Subduction Zone show faults rapidly reload stress with small tidal forces.
- Understanding this cohesion may change hazard models for subduction zones, as rapid deep-fault healing could help researchers explain how regenerating faults feed major earthquakes and affect seismic hazard assessments in regions like the Cascadia Subduction Zone involving megathrust earthquakes.
- Thomas and Watkins recently received a National Science Foundation grant to investigate the cohesion and short-timescale recovery mechanism, which remains uncertain and flagged for future work.
12 Articles
12 Articles
Rocks on Faults Can Heal Following Seismic Movement
New studies show that rocks can cement themselves together under the conditions found on a subducting fault. Scanning electron microscope images of quartz powder before (top) and after six and 24 hours of treatment at 1 Gigapascal and 500 degrees Celsius.
Here’s How Rocks Heal Themselves in Deep Faults
Earthquakes are pretty straightforward, geologically speaking. Tectonic plates grind against each other at faultlines, building up stress over centuries or millennia. Then that fault slips and the huge amounts of pent up energy is released in the blink of an eye, triggering violent shaking. Slow slip events, or SSEs, are a little more complex. In these seismological interactions, first identified in 2002, fault lines slow dance, grinding, ruptur…
Scientists Discover Earthquake Faults Can Heal Themselves in Hours
Scientists have discovered that deep earthquake faults can heal themselves within hours, acting like “quick-set glue” after slow slip events. By recreating high-pressure, high-temperature conditions in the lab, researchers found that quartz grains can rapidly weld back together, restoring strength far faster than previously thought. Deep Fault Healing Breakthrough Earthquake faults located far beneath the [...]
Rocks on faults can heal following seismic movement, scientists discover
Earthquake faults deep in Earth can glue themselves back together following a seismic event, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Davis. The work, published in Science Advances, adds a new factor to our understanding of the behavior of faults that can give rise to major earthquakes.
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