Fennoscandian Earthquakes: Whole Crustal Rupturing Related to Postglacial Rebound

doi:10.1126/science.274.5288.744

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Science 1 November 1996:
Vol. 274. no. 5288, pp. 744 - 746
DOI: 10.1126/science.274.5288.744

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Fennoscandian Earthquakes: Whole Crustal Rupturing Related to Postglacial Rebound

Ronald Arvidsson ^*

Local and regional earthquake locations provide seismic evidence that large shield earthquakes have occurred in northern Fennoscandia. These paleoearthquakes, with fault lengths of up to 160 kilometers and average displacements of up to 15 meters, were triggered by nonisostatic compressive stresses caused by the removal of the ice at the end of the last deglaciation. The Fennoscandian faults were probably formed by single events that ruptured through most of the crust. The largest event, moment magnitude M_W $approx$ 8.2, was larger than other known stable continent earthquakes outside failed rifts or extended crust.

Seismological Department, Uppsala University, Box 2101, S-750 02 Uppsala, Sweden.
^* Present address: Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, 20 Oxford Street, Cambridge 02138, MA, USA.

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:

Deglacial and postglacial sedimentary architecture in a deeply incised paleovalley-paleofjord--The Pennsylvanian (late Carboniferous) Jejenes Formation, San Juan, Argentina.: M. Dykstra, B. Kneller, and J. P. Milana (2006)
GSA Bulletin 118, 913-937
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