Shen, L., Hooper, A. orcid.org/0000-0003-4244-6652, Elliott, J.R. orcid.org/0000-0003-2957-4596 et al. (1 more author) (2024) Variability in interseismic strain accumulation rate and style along the Altyn Tagh Fault. Nature Communications, 15 (1). 6876. ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
Major strike-slip faults that develop between strong and weaker regions are thought to focus along narrow shear zones at the rheological boundary. Here we present the InSAR-derived velocity field spanning almost the entire length of one such fault, the 1600 km-long Altyn Tagh Fault (ATF), and analyse the strain distribution. We find that localisation of strain is actually variable, in contrast to other major strike-slip faults that show little variation, with strain concentrated at the fault for some sections and distributed over broad (>100 km) shear zones for others. Slip rate along the ATF is also variable, decreasing along the fault from 11.6 ± 1.6 mm/yr in the west to 7.2 ± 1.4 mm/yr in the central portion, before increasing again to 11.7 ± 0.9 mm/yr over the eastern portion. We show that the variable shear zone width may be linked to geological variability and the influence of heat flow, and the results imply that sub-parallel faults play an important role in the overall deformation field. This demonstrates the significance of accurately characterising strain rates over a broad region when assessing seismic hazard.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Earth Sciences; Geology; Geophysics |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst of Geophysics and Tectonics (IGT) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 20 Aug 2024 09:48 |
Last Modified: | 20 Aug 2024 09:49 |
Published Version: | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51116-z |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-024-51116-z |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:216259 |