Title
Tectonic inversion in the Caribbean-South American plate boundary: GPS geodesy, seismology, and tectonics of the M<inf>w</inf> 6.7 22 April 1997 Tobago earthquake
Date Issued
01 January 2015
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Weber J.C.
Geirsson H.
Latchman J.L.
Shaw K.
La Femina P.
Wdowinski S.
Higgins M.
Churches C.
Publisher(s)
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Abstract
On 22 April 1997 the largest earthquake recorded in the Trinidad-Tobago segment of the Caribbean-South American plate boundary zone (Mw 6.7) ruptured a shallow (~9 km), ENE striking (~250 azimuth), shallowly dipping (~28) dextral-normal fault ~10 km south of Tobago. In this study, we describe this earthquake and related foreshock and aftershock seismicity, derive coseismic offsets using GPS data, and model the fault plane and magnitude of slip for this earthquake. Coseismic slip estimated at our episodic GPS sites indicates movement of Tobago 135 ± 6 to 68 ± 6 mm NNE and subsidence of 7 ± 9 to 0 mm. This earthquake was anomalous and is of interest because (1) its large component of normal slip and ENE strike are unexpected given the active E-W dextral shearing across the Caribbean-South American plate boundary zone, (2) it ruptured a normal fault plane with a low (~28) dip angle, and (3) it reactivated and inverted the preexisting Tobago terrrane-South America ocean-continent (thrust) boundary that formed during early Tertiary oblique plate convergence.
Start page
1181
End page
1194
Volume
34
Issue
6
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Geología
Geoquímica, Geofísica
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84948568117
Source
Tectonics
ISSN of the container
02787407
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus