IRFP: Stress levels on the Alpine Fault, New Zealand from two perspectives

Kidder Steven B, Pasadena CA

Investigators

Abstract

The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Steven Kidder to work with Dr. Dave Prior at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Dr. Kidder will use two techniques to estimate stress levels on New Zealand's Alpine Fault, a plate boundary structure cable of producing large earthquakes. First, stress estimates will be made using an inversion of a kinematic-thermal model so as to define the range of stresses compatible with temperature-time constraints. Secondly, stresses measured using the recrystallized grain size piezometer in quartz will be compared with the model results to, for the first time, test the accuracy of this type of piezometry under geologic conditions independently of laboratory-derived extrapolations. The project addresses two important objectives in the Earth Sciences: 1) quantifying the magnitudes, variability and uncertainty of stress levels associated with earthquakes and plate motions, and 2) developing and improving tools to do so. Educational aspects of the project involve helping teach an undergraduate course and initiating and supervising research projects for undergraduate and graduate students.