seismic evidence for overpressured subducted oceanic crust and megathrust fault sealing water and hydrous minerals play a key role in geodynamic processes at subduction zones however there are few seismological constraints on the presence of water within the subducting plate audet et al model converted teleseismic waves to constrain the seismological properties of subducted oceanic crust from the cascadia continental margin to its intersection with the forearc mantle their observations suggest that water is pervasively present in fluid form at high pore pressures indicating that the megathrust is a low permeability boundary these results may hold important implications for our understanding of seismogenesis subduction zone structure and the mechanism of episodic tremor and slip this study models converted teleseismic waves to constrain the seismological properties of subducted oceanic crust from the cascadia continental margin to its intersection with the forearc mantle the observations suggest that water is pervasively present in fluid form at high pore pressures indicating that the megathrust is a low permeability boundary these results may hold important implications for our understanding of seismogenesis subduction zone structure and the mechanism of episodic tremor and slip water and hydrous minerals play a key part in geodynamic processes at subduction zones1 2 3 by weakening the plate boundary aiding slip and permitting subduction and indeed plate tectonics to occur4 the seismological signature of water within the forearc mantle wedge is evident in anomalies with low seismic shear velocity marking serpentinization5 6 7 however seismological observations bearing on the presence of water within the subducting plate itself are less well documented here we use converted teleseismic waves to obtain observations of anomalously high poisson s ratios within the subducted oceanic crust from the cascadia continental margin to its intersection with forearc mantle on the basis of pressure temperature and compositional considerations the elevated poisson s ratios indicate that water is pervasively present in fluid form at pore pressures near lithostatic values combined with observations of a strong negative velocity contrast at the top of the oceanic crust our results imply that the megathrust is a low permeability boundary the transition from a low to high permeability plate interface downdip into the mantle wedge is explained by hydrofracturing of the seal by volume changes across the interface caused by the onset of crustal eclogitization and mantle serpentinization these results may have important implications for our understanding of seismogenesis subduction zone structure and the mechanism of episodic tremor and slip

preliminary comparison of diagenetic stratiform copper mineralization from redstone nw territories canada and kamoto shaban copperbelt zaire recent studies of stratiform copper mineralization in the redstone copperbelt of the nw territories canada indicate analogies with sediments of modern intertidal and supratidal environments textural analyses show that mineralization occurred in microbial laminated carbonate units during diagenesis following initial enrichment of the carbonates in iron sulphides and evaporitic sulphates similar features have been described for the dolomitic beds hosting the well known kamoto ores of the shaban copperbelt the present work gives a brief comparison of the redstone and shaban host rocks and their mineralization similarities include the interpreted shallow marine red bed sequence and the presence of stromatolitic and microbial laminated structures in the carbonates however the shaban host rocks are more magnesian than those at redstone and silicification in shaba surpasses the more normal diagenetic silification seen at redstone the copper copper iron and iron sulphides of redstone and shaba exhibit similar peneconcordant arrays across their respective basal carbonate horizons but cobalt is important only in the shaban mineralization a more detailed comparison of host rocks and mineralization in these two copperbelts is currently in progress

recurrence behavior of short term slow slip and correlated nonvolcanic tremor episodes in western shikoku southwest japan 1 from the national research institute for earth science and disaster prevention hi net tiltmeter data we determine time dependent source processes of seven repeating short term slow slip events sse in the western shikoku region southwest japan over the period from 2002 to 2007 the tiltmeters record clear signals of sses characterized by a slow rise a week long duration and a magnitude on the order of 10 2 10 1 rad we apply a time dependent slip inversion method to the tilt records for the seven sses for each sse a slip area migrates in the strike direction of the subducting slab at a rate of 10 km d 1 comparing the slow slip area with epicenters of accompanying nonvolcanic tremors in subday time resolution we find that the two phenomena are located on a smaller area than previously reported and migrate as a group a moment rate function for each sse exhibits good correlation with the temporal change in tremor activity a comparison of the slip distributions of all of the analyzed sses shows that there is a patch of slow slip area 30 km in diameter that is shared by all of the episodes in addition the location of the slip patch is in good agreement with the epicenters of tremors and very low frequency earthquakes these lines of evidence suggest that the identified slip patch is one of the main slow slip patches in the region and a recurrence of sses may be controlled by the patch and that these slow earthquakes might be different manifestations of a single slip process on the deep plate interface

dynamic modeling of slow slip coupled with tremor 1 we theoretically study the generation mechanism of slow slip in a dynamical framework assuming a fault in a fluid saturated thermoporoelastic medium the fluid flow is taken into consideration dynamic slip is assumed to create pores and cause shear heating on the fault key parameters in the modeling are su and su the nondimensional parameter su represents the relative dominance of the effect of pore creation on the fluid pressure change over that of shear heating while su is associated with the dominance of fluid flow effect over the effect of shear heating our calculation shows that we have to assume su 1 and relatively small values for su to simulate rupture speed that is negligibly small compared to the shear wave velocity although this was also found in our former paper our new finding here is the simulation of slow slip coupled with tremor we find that frozen slip is reactivated sporadically because the fluid inflow triggered by the pore creation elevates the fluid pressure on the fault the slip reactivation actually occurs if su is smaller than a threshold such sporadic reactivation of slips can be a model for slow slip coupled with tremor we also show that the moment evolution curves are categorized into two separate groups when su 0 1 one of them represents slow slips while the other represents ordinary earthquakes

episodic slow slip events accompanied by non volcanic tremors in southwest japan subduction zone 1 episodic slow slip events have been recognized by means of tilt changes in the western shikoku area southwest japan the crustal tilt deformation was observed repeatedly with a recurrence interval of approximately six months coincident with the occurrences of major non volcanic deep tremor activities in this area observed tilt changes can be explained by slow slip events occurring around the source area of tremors in each episode the source of the slow slip event and tremor migrate simultaneously the spatial and temporal coincidence of tremors and slow slip events indicates that they both may be coupling phenomena reflecting the stress accumulation process at the subducting plate

variety and spatial heterogeneity of tectonic tremor worldwide 1 deep tectonic tremor occurs at various sites worldwide and the source characteristics are heterogeneous even at small scales in this study tremor sources were determined using data sets of seismic waveforms from various locations some of which are not well recognized as being a site of tremor activity the regions of interest are subduction zones at nankai and kyushu japan cascadia in western north america mexico southern chile and new zealand tremor locations are consistent with the geometry of subducting plates and tremor depth tends to be shallower where younger plate is subducting tremor duration shows a negative correlation with tidal sensitivity as reported previously in western shikoku in the nankai subduction zone the duration is also related to the width of the tremor zone in the dip direction of the subducting plate linear structures resembling striations are observed in hypocenter distributions in western shikoku and in the probability of short term migration direction these spatial heterogeneities in tremor activity may be controlled by the heterogeneous frictional properties of the downgoing slab due to long term plate subduction thereby providing information on the maturity of the plate interface

along strike variations in short term slow slip events in the southwest japan subduction zone 1 short term slow slip events accompanied by nonvolcanic deep low frequency tremors and deep very low frequency earthquakes in southwest japan were investigated systematically by means of ground tilting studies the change in tilt usually lasts for several days by using a genetic algorithm and a least squares method we inverted the data for tilt steps that were caused by slow slip events and were detected by at least four stations situated near the source of the tremor fault parameters were estimated for 54 slow slip episodes that occurred mainly in the western shikoku northeastern kii and tokai regions from 2001 to 2008 in eastern shikoku two slow slip episodes were detected quantitatively for the first time the fault geometries of all the slow slip events were located within the belt like distribution of tremors in the transition zone between the locked and aseismic slip zones at the plate interface of the subducting philippine sea plate the spatial extent of the fault geometry corresponds roughly to the distribution of clusters of nonvolcanic tremors and very low frequency earthquakes the moment magnitudes ranged from 5 4 to 6 2 and the slip was 1 cm for each slow slip event the rate of moment release by the detected slow slip events was 40 60 of the moment accumulation expected from the relative plate motion and it showed regional differences they may reflect the along strike variations in plate convergence and or the characteristic size of the slow slip fault plane on the plate interface

zircon u pb and biotite 40ar 39ar geochronology from the anzan emerald deposit in zambia abstract the kafubu emerald area in zambia is an important producer of gemstone quality emeralds the country rocks include carbonatization altered rock and emerald hosting biotite chlorite schist from the anzan emerald deposit in the kafubu area zambia the technique of la mc icp ms is used to perform chronology measurements of the country rock and emerald hosting rock which belong to muva supergroup yielding zircon u pb concordia ages of 1966 12 ma in carbonatization altered rock and 1853 58 ma and 1344 30 ma in biotite chlorite schist meanwhile dating of biotite chlorite schist using the biotite 40 ar 39 ar method has obtained the plateau age of t 578 3 2 6 ma isochron age of 577 5 3 0 ma and reverse isochron age of 577 4 3 0 ma thus we have redefined the age of muva supergroup in the copperbelt province in zambia to be older than or equal to 1966 12 ma and found that the ore bodies in the anzan emerald deposit underwent three phases of metamorphism at 1853 58 ma 1344 ma 30 and 578 3 2 6 ma and finally accomplished the emerald mineralization the age of the anzan emerald deposit is earlier than the kagem 452 1 16 ma and the kamakanga emerald deposits 447 8 6 ma

rapid continuous streaking of tremor in cascadia nonvolcanic tremor is a recently discovered weak seismic signal associated with slow slip on a fault plane and has potential to answer many questions about how faults move its spatiotemporal distribution however is complex and varies over different time scales and the causal physical mechanisms remain unclear here we use a beam backprojection method to show rapid continuous slip parallel streaking of tremor over time scales of several minutes to an hour during the may 2008 episodic tremor and slip event in the cascadia subduction zone the streaks propagate across distances up to 65 km primarily parallel to the slip direction of the subduction zone both updip and downdip at velocities ranging from 30 to 200 km h we explore mainly two models that may explain such continuous tremor streaking the first involves interaction of slowly migrating creep front with slip parallel linear structures on the fault the second is pressure driven fluid flow through structurally controlled conduits on the fault both can be consistent with the observed propagation velocities and geometries although the second one requires unlikely condition in addition we put this new observation in the context of the overall variability of tremor behavior observed over different time scales

laterally propagating slow slip events in a rate and state friction model with a velocity weakening to velocity strengthening transition we investigate the behavior of simulated slow slip events using a rate and state friction model that is steady state velocity weakening at low slip speeds but velocity strengthening at high slip speeds our simulations are on a one dimensional line fault but we modify the elastic interactions to mimic the elongate geometry frequently observed in slow slip events simulations exhibit a number of small events as well as periodic large events the large events propagate approximately steadily along strike and stress and slip rate decay gradually behind the propagating front their recurrence intervals can be determined by considering what is essentially an energy balance requirement for long distance propagation it is possible to choose the model parameters such that the simulated events have the stress drops slip velocities and propagation rates observed in cascadia

an earthquake like magnitude frequency distribution of slow slip in northern cascadia 1 major episodic tremor and slip ets events with mw 6 4 to 6 7 repeat every 15 2 months within the cascadia subduction zone under the olympic peninsula although these major ets events are observed to release strain smaller tremor swarms without detectable geodetic deformation are more frequent an automatic search from 2006 2009 reveals 20 000 five minute windows containing tremor which cluster in space and time into 96 tremor swarms the 93 inter ets tremor swarms account for 45 of the total duration of tremor detection during the last three ets cycles the number of tremor swarms n exceeding duration follow a power law distribution n 0 66 if duration is proportional to moment release the slip inferred from these swarms follows a standard gutenberg richter logarithmic frequency magnitude relation with the major ets events and smaller inter ets swarms lying on the same trend this relationship implies that 1 inter ets slip is fundamentally similar to the major events just smaller and more frequent and 2 despite fundamental differences in moment duration scaling the slow slip magnitude frequency distribution is the same as normal earthquakes with a b value of 1

seismic and geodetic constraints on cascadia slow slip 1 automatically detected and located tremor epicenters from episodic tremor and slip ets episodes in northern cascadia provide a high resolution map of washington s slow slip region thousands of epicenters from the past four ets events from 2004 to 2008 provide detailed map view constraints that correlate with geodetic estimates of the simultaneous slow slip each of these ets events exhibits remarkable similarity in the timing and geographic distribution of tremor density and geodetically inferred slip analysis of the latest 15 month inter ets period also reveals ageodetic tremor activity similar both in duration and extent to ets tremor epicenters from both ets and inter ets tremor are bounded between the 30 and 45 km plate interface depth contours and locate approximately 75 km east of previous estimates of the locked portion of the subducting juan de fuca plate inter ets tremor overlaps but is generally downdip of ets tremor and does not yet correlate with geodetically observed slip but this is likely because the slip is below current gps detection levels based on the tremor and slip correlation and the tremor duration and slip magnitude relationship we suggest that the well resolved sharp updip edge of tremor epicenters reflects a change in plate interface coupling properties the region updip of this boundary may accumulate stress with the potential for coseismic shear failure during a megathrust earthquake alternatively plate convergence in this region could be accommodated by continuous slow slip with no detectable tremor or by slow slip events with sufficiently long recurrence intervals that none have been detected during the past 10 years of gps observations

tremor bands sweep cascadia 1 during the slow slip events in cascadia and japan a well documented feature of nonvolcanic tremor nvt is its puzzling slow along strike migration but the cause possible implications and underlying physics of this long term tremor migration and its relationship with slow slip remain elusive here we use tremor data recorded by a dense seismic array in cascadia and apply a beam backprojection technique to map the spatiotemporal evolution of tremor with high resolution it reveals that elongated slip parallel bands of tremor activity illuminate the slipping part of the plate interface over the time scale of several hours and sweep cascadia along strike from south to north we propose that small changes in static stress due to slow slip in a section of the fault cause slip and associated nvt activity in the adjacent section and the resulting progressive along strike transfer of stress is responsible for the long term tremor migration during a slow slip event

continental crustals regimes as factors in the formation of sedimentary ore deposits although the formation of metalliferous mineral deposits by processes active in sedimentary basins depends ultimately on physical and chemical conditions at the site of deposition the style scale and timing of mineralization are influenced by tectonic and magmatic events which relate to the evolution of the crustal environment as a whole during the archaean era when geothermal gradients were high and igneous activity widespread sedimentary processes played little part in mineralization the development of cratonic crustal massifs at the beginning of the proterozoic era was followed by an increase in the variety and size of deposits formed in sedimentary basins from this time onward the cratonic cover formations have provided important sites for the deposition of metals these metals entered the basins from a variety of sources some being derived from weathering and erosion of the basement and others being transferred to surface levels by magmas and volatiles originating in the mantle or lower crust it is suggested that the timing of mineralization is related to that of the major magmatic and tectonic happenings determined by the global tectonic regime

alternative sources of metals for stratiform copper deposits abstract the controversy between sedimentary and epigenetic emplacement of copper in stratiform copper deposits appears to be subsiding in favour of an essentially synsedimentary enrichment of sulphur e g disseminated pyrite and or sulphates which undergo biogenic reduction to sulphide followed by an early diagenetic addition of copper to the host sediment the source of the copper has yet to be conclusively identified since the copper is deposited upon migrating into reducing zones e g sulphide rich organic bearing black shales and sulphate bearing microbial laminated carbonates the closest source of copper could be the commonly adjacent red beds where oxidising conditions would favour solution of copper in the presence of interstitial brines the thickness of these red bed sections is typically measured in 100 s to 1000 s of metres and they commonly contain abundant immature detrital grains including mafic minerals which could provide sufficient trace element copper to form major ore deposits copper in red beds may also include metal initially absorbed on amorphous iron oxides and released during diagenetic reddening of these oxides to form haematite on the other hand the ubiquitous red beds might be discounted as a principal source of copper and could be considered for the most part to have behaved as permeable beds through which cupriferous solutions from other sources migrated toward the grey beds for example mafic volcanics are found in important quantities in stratigraphic sequences hosting several stratiform copper deposits and could contribute large volumes of metalliferous solutions during metamorphic dehydration alternatively these same volcanic rocks may suggest volcanic associated pene exhalative activity with hydrothermal fluids emptying into subsurface red bed aquifers rather than onto surface sediments as commonly proposed for exhalative models although fluids of 250 c are generally considered necessary to transport copper in significant quantities in sulphide bearing exhalations lower temperatures are sufficient for chloride complexing in the absence of sulphide the large volumes of red beds could also have a major cooling effect on initially hot solutions the pene exhalative model may be closely related to fault bounded hot spring models of the type envisaged for so called shale hosted submarine exhalative base metal deposits

space time correlation of slip and tremor during the 2009 cascadia slow slip event 1 episodic tremor and slip ets involving transient deformations accompanied by emergent low frequency tremor occurs in subduction zones around the world ets events increase the shear stress on locked megathrusts and may potentially trigger damaging earthquakes despite the clear association of tremor and slip the physical relationship between them is unresolved tremor appears to result from slip on small asperities on the plate interface due to either creep on the surrounding fault or stress increases ahead of the propagating slow slip front previous studies of migrating slow slip events have not had sufficient spatial and temporal resolution to differentiate between these two models to address this we invert gps data from the august 2009 ets event in central cascadia for the space time evolution of fault slip rate we find a correlation in both space and time between tremor epicenters and the independently determined position of high fault slip rate this supports the first hypothesis that tremor asperities are loaded directly by slow slip rather than by stress increases ahead of the slip front and provides new insights into the mechanics of ets

automated detection and location of cascadia tremor 1 a new autonomous seismic location and detection methodology enables real time opportunities for high resolution spatio temporal monitoring of non volcanic tremor combining a unique cross correlation technique with epicenter clustering analysis in northern cascadia automatically yields thousands of tremor epicenters from the may 2008 episodic tremor and slip ets event while routinely detecting and locating inconspicuous inter ets tremor bursts although ets events in this area produce about two weeks of continuous tremor we find a nearly equal amount of tremor during the last 15 month inter ets period the resulting ets and inter ets epicenters occur in the slow slip region where the plate interface is 30 45 km deep and have a sharp well resolved updip boundary about 75 km east of the downdip edge of the seismogenic megathrust zone this ability to track tremor with high spatio temporal resolution facilitates automatic tremor monitoring and the mapping of the transition zone and regions of locked zone stress accumulation

modeling the activity of short term slow slip events along deep subduction interfaces beneath shikoku southwest japan 1 we developed a model of short term slow slip events sses on the 3 d subduction interface beneath shikoku southwest japan considering a rate and state dependent friction law with a small cutoff velocity for the evolution effect we assume low effective normal stress and small critical displacement at the sse zone on the basis of the hypocentral distribution of low frequency tremors we set three sse generation segments a large segment beneath western shikoku and two smaller segments beneath central and eastern shikoku using this model we reproduce events beneath western shikoku with longer lengths in the along strike direction and with longer recurrence times compared with events beneath central and eastern shikoku the numerical results are consistent with observations in that the events at longer segments have longer recurrence intervals the activity of sses is determined by nonuniform frictional properties at the transition zone we also attempt to model the very low frequency vlf earthquakes that accompany short term sses on a 2 d thrust fault we consider a local patch in which the friction parameters are varied in the case that critical displacement is very small at the patch fast multiple slips occur at the patch in the case that the effective normal stress is high at the patch the patch acts as a barrier to sses when it ruptures however rapid slip occurs because the source time functions of these cases are somewhat different it would be possible in the future to assess if either case is an appropriate model for vlf earthquakes

tidal modulation of slow slip in cascadia 1 several studies have shown that the seismic tremor in episodic tremor and slip is tidally modulated suggesting a sensitivity to the rather small tidal stresses we address whether the slip rate in slow slip events is also tidally modulated by examining data from six borehole strainmeters in northwest washington and southern vancouver island we simultaneously fit data from multiple stations and from slow slip events occurring over a 3 year interval from january 2007 to june 2009 as we are unable to extract a meaningful signal from a single record we find modulation of the strain rate with a 12 4 h period that of the tide with the largest amplitude that is significant at the 99 level the amplitude of this modulation suggests that the slip rate during slow slip events oscillates on average 25 above and below its mean value during a tidal cycle tidal modulation estimates at three other periods are significant with more than 70 probability the phase of maximum strain rate in the 12 4 h m2 period coincides with the phase of the maximum tremor rate taken from a catalog in an overlapping region comparison with a simple tidal loading model shows that the phase of maximum strain rate in the m2 period may occur at the maximum shear stress or up to 90 before it depending on the location of slip in the subduction zone

microlite morphology and chemistry in pseudotachylite from the fuyun fault zone china microlites in pseudotachylite veins from the fuyun fault zone northwest china can be divided into four morphological groups simple skeletal dendritic and spherulitic from the margin to the center of microcrystalline and microlitic pseudotachylite veins the size of single crystals or crystal fibers becomes progressively larger from a few m to as much as 15 m the morphologies of microlites vary from simple shapes such as acicular and globular forms to more complex forms such as skeletal dendritic and coarse spherulitic forms in glassy pseudotachylites only simple and fine spherulitic microlites generally smaller than 5 6 m occur these microlites have a varied mineralogy but are mainly made up of plagioclase an20 70 and alkali feldspar including sanidine and anorthoclase as well as clinopyroxene grossular garnet biotite hornblende and some magnetic minerals the biotite and hornblende microlites have a variable ti content generally higher than that of biotite and hornblende frag