Circum‐Pacific faulting in the Philippines‐Taiwan Region
TLDR
In this article, structural and physiographic features of the 1200 km-long Philippine fault zone are fully as spectacular as those of the better-known San Andreas and Alpine faults, and current activity is indicated by many localities in which scarps cut Recent gravels.Abstract:
Conflicting views of circum-Pacific tectonics have focused on the Philippines-Taiwan region, where there has been neither convincing documentation nor general agreement on the importance of transcurrent (strike-slip) faulting or the possible sense of regional horizontal displacement. Structural and physiographic features of the 1200-km-long Philippine fault zone are fully as spectacular as those of the better-known San Andreas and Alpine faults, and current activity is indicated by many localities in which scarps cut Recent gravels. Predominance of horizontal over vertical displacements is indicated by linearity of the fault trace, failure of one side to be consistently higher than the other, disregard for gross physiography, and scissoring of individual scarps within the zone. Consistent stream offsets on Luzon, Masbate, and Leyte demonstrate unequivocally that the sense of Recent displacement has been uniformly sinistral (left-handed). The Philippine fault has no obvious geologic relationship to active volcanoes, but the parallelism and proximity of the fault to the Mindanao trench suggest a close causal relationship. The remarkable Longitudinal Valley of eastern Taiwan represents another great transcurrent fault parallel to the western Pacific rim, and ground displacements during historic earthquakes indicate a sinistral sense of displacement here as well as in the adjacent Philippines. This study does not support the hypothesis of counterclockwise rotation of the Pacific basin, but more important is the further documentation of the predominance of transcurrent faulting in active circum-Pacific orogenic areas. These results reinforce earlier field studies in Alaska, California, Chile, and New Zealand, as well as emphasizing the geological reasonability of the results of seismic fault-plane solutions indicating the world-wide predominance of transcurrent movements.read more
Citations
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Plate convergence, transcurrent faults, and internal deformation adjacent to Southeast Asia and the western Pacific
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Relations among subduction parameters
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Cenozoic plate reconstruction of Southeast Asia
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The instantaneous rotation vector of the philippine sea plate relative to the eurasian plate
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Seismic gaps and plate tectonics: Seismic potential for major boundaries
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References
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TL;DR: The first detailed bathymetric chart of the Pacific Ocean was published by the U. S. Navy during World War II as mentioned in this paper, covering the area from Korea to New Guinea including within it the Marianas, the western Carolines, the Philippines, the Ryukyus, southern Japan, the Bonins, and the Volcanoes.
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The Alaska earthquake of July 10, 1958: Movement on the Fairweather fault and field investigation of southern epicentral region
TL;DR: The Fairweather fault is recognizable as a geologic and geomorphic feature from Palma Bay on the southeast at least as far northwest as Nunatak Fiord east of Yakutat Bay, a distance of 200 kilometers along the surface trace as discussed by the authors.
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Nature of faulting in large earthquakes
TL;DR: The method is ambiguous in that two planes, neither of which is indicated as the fault, are defined for each solution as mentioned in this paper, which does not obscure the fact that of the 75 earthquakes all but 8 resulted from strike-slip faulting.
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A Method of Graben and Horst Formation
TL;DR: In this paper, the mechanics of the formation of such features is explained, and it is shown that grabens and horsts between transcurrent faults in New Zealand, currently explained by normal faulting, are caused by lateral displacement.