Findings and Recommendations - New Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences - page 91

FAULTING AND DEFORMATION PROCESSES
Rapid discoveries are being made regarding the nature of fault slip and
associated deformation processes in active tectonics environments, with a huge
spectrum of fault slip velocities being revealed by concerted geodetic and seismic
data collection. Tremendously damaging recent earthquakes in Haiti (2010), Chile
(2010), and Japan (2011) are only harbingers of the huge societal toll that could be
exacted by earthquakes in the upcoming century, with burgeoning populations in
seismically active areas being at risk. The combination of rapid scientific
advancements and great societal relevance motivates enhanced EAR attention to the
processes of faulting and deformation in active tectonic regions. Understanding the
behavior of faulting and earthquake occurrence has also been deemed a Grand
Challenge in the science plans of geodynamics (Olson, 2010), seismology (Lay,
2009), GeoPRISMS (Margins Office, 2010), EarthScope (Williams et al., 2010),
(UNAVCO, 2009), and the NRC (2008) report Origin and Evolution of Earth .
The field of earthquake science is now recognized to involve a complex
geosystem with multiscale processes from the microscale controls on surface friction
up to the regional-scale processes of sedimentary basin reverberation and excitation
of tsunamis by ocean water displacements. While single-investigator contributions
remain paramount to the discovery and disciplinary advances underlying the surge of
progress in earthquake science, there has been profound value in developing
communities that address the geosystem perspective by bringing together researchers
with expertise spanning laboratory friction experiments, observational and theoretical
seismology, geodesy, structural geology, earthquake engineering, field geology,
volcanology, magnetotellurics, and deep drilling. These approaches are flourishing,
and in the next decade integrative efforts built around natural fault zone and
subduction zone laboratories hold promise of greatly advancing our understanding of
faulting and deformation processes and associated roles of fluid, volatile, and material
fluxes. Large data collection and integrated analysis efforts are intrinsic to these
natural laboratory investigations.
Finding 1 : Completion of the envisioned Earthscope project through 2018, with the
Transportable Array being deployed across Alaska and continued operation of the
Plate Boundary Observatory will provide major advances in our understanding of the
North American continent and deformation processes along the plate boundaries in
the Aleutians, Alaska, and the western United States. Full realization of the goals of
EarthScope will be a major achievement for EAR and will position the Earth sciences
for future large facilities development.
Finding 2 : Integrative multidisciplinary activities such as MARGINS, GeoPRISMS,
and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) are particularly valuable for
investigating fault zone and plate boundary environments. The SCEC has
successfully bridged the earthquake science and earthquake engineering communities,
including strong public outreach. The GeoPRISMS 1 community has identified three
1 GeoPRISMS science plan.