Earth’s surface is covered by many kinds of granular materials, including sediments and soils. Below ground, grains are also widespread in unconsolidated deposits and fault zones; even polycrystalline rocks deep inside the Earth are made up of mineral grains. These materials deform under their own weight and external forces, but what forces act inside them? …[Read More]
TS Must-read series, the wrap up In 2020, we started the Must Read activity by asking the TS community a simple question: which papers do you think every tectonics and structural geology student should read? that led to more than a thousand nominations and lively debate. A short list of 48 Must Read papers was …[Read More]
Haakon Fossen and Geane Carolina G. Cavalcante published their seminal review on the topic of shear zones in 2017 in the journal Earth-Science Reviews. The work summarizes the scientific findings on the development and quantification of ductile shear zones sincefrom the the 1960s up to recently. It describes the fundamental aspects of the initiation and …[Read More]
Earthquakes shake the Earth almost every day, but what exactly happens within rocks during these seismic events is a matter of debate in the scientific community. The article “Do faults preserve a record of seismic slip: A second opinion,” published in 2015, offers a thoughtful review of the sure and potential records of seismic slip …[Read More]
In this Must Read paper “3D seismic analysis of the structure and evolution of a salt-influenced normal fault zone: a test of competing fault growth models (2013)”, by Christopher A-L. Jackson and Atle Rotevatn used detailed 3D seismic reflection data from the Suez Rift, Egypt, to gain a better understanding of the structural evolution of …[Read More]
Rifted margins are regions at the transition from oceanic to continental crust, formed by the stretching and thinning of the Earth’s lithosphere before the creation of new ocean basins. The study focused on three key transects across Atlantic rifted margins. In their 2013 article in Marine and Petroleum Geology, Peron-Pinvidic et al. present a comparative …[Read More]
Large subduction earthquakes cause perturbation of the subduction system, whose response depends on its rheological characteristics. The evolution of the subduction system from earthquake to earthquake is defined as subduction earthquake cycle (SEC), and is characterised by three main processes that operate over decades/centuries: postseismic afterslip, viscoelastic mantle relaxation, and fault relocking. Despite the precise …[Read More]
Neil Mancktelow published this Must-Read paper on the concept of “tectonic pressure” in 2008. The paper reviews previous work and theoretical concepts published on this fundamental topic. Additionally, numerical models that estimate the magnitude of tectonic pressure variations are presented for several realistic natural structures, such as folds, boudins, and inclusions. The premise of tectonic …[Read More]
In 2008 Roland Bürgmann and Georg Dresen published their Must-Read paper on the rheology of the lower crust and upper mantle, based on findings from the lab, the field and space. As stated in the introduction, “rheology is the study of the flow and deformation of all forms of matter,” and as such the rheology …[Read More]
The TS Must-Read paper by Hudec and Jackson (2007) provides a combination of analogue models and natural cases to describe, in a review paper, salt flow mechanisms, diapir growth, and the ways these processes interact with regional deformation, in compression and extensional tectonics. Salt is mechanically weak and can flow like a fluid …[Read More]
