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Earthquakes and Crustal Deformation

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Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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Definition

The term earthquake is commonly used only to describe sudden slip on a fault within the Earth that produces seismic waves in the frequency bands that we can either feel or observe with seismometers. However, other sources that produce deformation of the Earth’s surface do not generate seismic waves but are instead observable with sensitive geodetic instruments that measure the crustal deformation directly. Because of the great advances over the past few decades in observing and understanding them, in this chapter we broaden the definition of earthquake to include these “quiet” sources of Earth deformation. Other chapters deal with some of these sources in more detail.

With this enhanced definition, earthquakes encompass a wide range of phenomena. The most common type we often think of is rapid slip within the Earth. The motion across a fault is typically of a shearing type but seismic disturbances can include volumetric or planar expansion in some settings, most notably near...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

    Robert McCaffrey

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  1. Robert McCaffrey
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Correspondence to Robert McCaffrey .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Seismology, National Geophysical Research Insti, Hyderabad, India

    Harsh K. Gupta

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McCaffrey, R. (2020). Earthquakes and Crustal Deformation. In: Gupta, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10475-7_2-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10475-7_2-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-10475-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-10475-7

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