Coseismic, Postseismic, and Contemporary Deformation in the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake Rupture Zone

University Of Alaska Fairbanks Campus, Fairbanks AK

Investigators

Abstract

Freymueller 9980496 Researchers from the University of Alaska and Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA) propose to study in detail the ongoing effects of the 1964 Alaska earthquake on the Kenai Peninsula and adjacent areas of southern Alaska. Previous work has shown evidence for substantial spatial variations in the contemporary (1993-1998) deformation, the cumulative postseismic and coseismic deformation. New data that will significantly improve our knowledge of the slip distributions responsible for the coseismic, postseismic and interseismic deformation will be collected and modeled. The proposed work is an advance over past work in several respects: (1) it will use recently uncovered historical data that will greatly improve the 1964 coseismic data set; (2) it will use improved modeling techniques rather than relying on coseismic displacements computed in the 1960s; 3) it will collect new data to constrain the cumulative postseismic and contemporary deformation; (4) a consistent and realistic geometric model will be used for all phases of the deformation, instead of different geometric models being used to study different phases of the deformation.