Fault movement on the crust is governed by stress levels. Our study focuses on the effect of stress transfer between faults, a mechanism long known to have potential for generating earthquakes. Our results suggest that static stress transfer would have acted as a destabilizing trigger during the sequence and that the experienced events would not have shortened the occurrence of future damaging shakes. The study aims to provide insight on an issue related to energy resources management.

Understanding the flow of large ice masses on Earth is a major challenge in our changing climate. Deformation mechanisms are governed by the strong anisotropy of ice. As anisotropy is currently moving into the focus of ice sheet flow studies, we provide a detailed analysis of microstructure data from natural ice core samples which directly relate to anisotropic plasticity. Our findings reveal surprising dislocation activity which seems to contradict the concept of macroscopic ice anisotropy.

Earth's surface is constantly warped up and down by the convecting mantle. Here we derive geodynamic rules for this so-called dynamic topography by employing high-resolution numerical models of global mantle convection. We define four types of dynamic topography history that are primarily controlled by the ever-changing pattern of Earth's subduction zones. Our models provide a predictive quantitative framework linking mantle convection with plate tectonics and sedimentary basin evolution.

The paper describes theory and numerical implementation for coupled thermo–hydraulic–mechanical processes focusing on reservoir (mainly related to geothermal energy) applications.

For the first time, digital image correlation was used to follow strain field development and evolution during micro-cracking, at the ductile-to-brittle transition in polycrystalline ice. Owing to the high-temperature conditions of the tests, dynamic recrystallization mechanisms (nucleation and sub-grain rotation) efficiently participate in the stress redistribution during and after crack opening, and even lead to local crack closure.

As ice sheets grow and shrink, they move rocks around. In Scandinavia the movement took place mostly from inland to offshore areas, resulting in ongoing uplift in Scandinavia and subsidence in offshore areas. This study calculated the changes in height and gravity and found that they are significant. Thus, effects of past sediment loading have to be taken into account when interpreting measurements of height and gravity change in areas close to former ice sheets with large sediment transport.

Teleseismic wave adjoint tomography is able to image the deep structure of the lithosphere. Here we proposed the element-by-element spectral-element method (EBE-SEM) for efficient teleseismic wave modeling. A detailed discussion of the teleseismic seismic incident boundary condition and PML absorbing boundary condition for the scattered waves are presented. Beside the high efficiency of EBE-SEM for the forward modeling of teleseismic waves, it is able to easily construct misfit kernels.

Structural 3-D modelling has become a widely used technique within applied projects. We performed a typical modelling workflow for a study site with the occurrence of an underground facility. This exceptional setting enabled us to test the surface-based extrapolation of faults with the mapped faults underground. We estimated the extrapolation-related uncertainty with probabilistic 2-D interpolation. This research was conducted to improve structural 3-D modelling in less-constrained areas.

This research assessed whether physical soil properties can be used to indicate the quality of British soils in terms of their delivery of ecosystem goods and services. A prioritised list of physical soil quality indicators (SQIs) were tested for robustness, spatial and temporal variability, and expected rate of change. Seven SQIs were selected: soil packing density, water retention characteristics, aggregate stability, rate of soil erosion, soil depth, soil structure and soil sealing.

Campi Flegrei is a volcanic caldera that is currently in a state of increased unrest. We used a novel remote-sensing approach to measure CO₂ fluxes at the Campi Flegrei. Thanks to its comprehensive spatial coverage, the instrument used gives more representative measurements from large regions containing different CO₂ sources. We find an increase in CO₂ degassing strength. This suggests a greater contribution of the magmatic source to the degassing.

Methods of measuring trace water contents of quartz at high resolution using synchrotron infrared radiation and spectroscopy are described and applied to deformed rocks of the Moine Thrust of NW Scotland and the Main Central Thrust of the Himalaya in NW India. By imaging OH absorption bands, variations in water content can be linked to deformation microstructures, providing information on the histories of deformation, recovery, introduction and loss of water, and water weakening.

This paper presents obspyDMT, a free, open-source software toolbox for the query, retrieval, processing and management of seismological data sets, including very large, heterogeneous and/or dynamically growing ones. ObspyDMT facilitates data archival, preprocessing, instrument correction and quality control. While primarily a productivity tool for research seismologists and observatories, easy-to-use syntax and plotting functionality also make obspyDMT an effective teaching aid.

The crystallographic texture of experimentally sheared samples of dynamically recrystallized quartzite have been reanalyzed using EBSD. Detailed grain size analysis reveals that the recrystallized grain size depends not only on stress, as assumed in the recrystallized quartz piezometer of Stipp and Tullis (2003), but also on texture, grain-scale deformation intensity, and the kinematic framework of axial versus general shear experiments.

Quartz crystallographic preferred orientations (textures) are widely used to interpret conditions, kinematics or deformation mechanisms in deformed rocks. Textures of experimentally deformed quartzite were analyzed and we find that the finite texture is the result of two different texture-forming processes that depend on stress and strain but not directly on temperature. The findings help in the interpretation of deformation conditions from textures in naturally deformed rocks.

The influences of land-use conversion on soil properties and bacterial communities were assessed. Diversity was detected in four distinct land-use systems through high-throughput sequencing. Land-use changes affected soil properties and bacterial community structures. The microbial dominant taxa were unchanged, but their relative abundances were significantly different, indicating that the effects of land-use conversion on bacterial communities were more quantitative than qualitative.