SSA Session Announcement

On behalf of Doug Yule, California State University, Northridge:
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Colleagues.

We would like to draw your attention to this session at the 2015 SSA meeting in Pasadena:

The Where, When and Why of Uncharacteristic Earthquakes

Session Description. Unexpectedly large and/or complex historic earthquakes, such as the 1920 Haiyuan, 1960 Chile, 1988 Spitak, 1992 Landers, 2011 Tohoku, 2012 Indian Ocean quakes, among others, beg the questions: where might the next uncharacteristic event occur, and have geoscientists underestimated the maximum size and rates of these type of events? These uncharacteristic earthquakes all ruptured through hypothesized segment boundaries that appear to impede rupture during typical earthquakes on these fault systems. Southern California contains a number of world-class examples of complex fault systems – the southern San Andreas fault system, the Eastern California Shear Zone, and the Transverse Ranges oblique-thrust system – that may spawn the next surprisingly large earthquake. With this meeting surrounded by these examples, we seek contributions that provide global insight into the record of and processes controlling regular versus atypically large events on fault systems. We welcome abstracts utilizing the geologic record, geophysical data, crustal deformation models and dynamic rupture models to shed insight into the behavior of these potentially devastating large earthquakes.

Doug Yule
California State University Northridge
doug.yule@csun.edu

Richard Heermance
California State University Northridge
richard.heermance@csun.edu

Michele Cooke
UMass Amherst
cooke@geo.umass.edu

Elizabeth Madden
UMass Amherst
ehmadden@geo.umass.edu

Jack Loveless
Smith College
jloveless@smith.edu