New approaches and recent mehodologies in Paleoseismology

What do we know about the intraplate seismicity?

In recent years destructive earthquakes have struck some regions previously considered as inactive or relatively stable (the Ms 6.3 at Ungava-Canada, the Ms 6.4 at Killari-India, the Ms 6.7 at Tennant Creek-Australia; see also table 1 in Crone et al., 1996). The main reason is that no studies of active faults were previously conducted in these zones, and the seismic zoning was only based on an incomplete historical seismic catalogue for the last centuries and scarce records of instrumental seismicity during the last decades (Johnston, 1996). Although the geologic record of earthquakes shows some complexities in the intraplate domain, it gives a unique opportunity:

1. to understand the intraplate tectonic activity (faulting mechanisms and geologic strain rates) and its relationship to the stress distribution in space and time.
2. to model the faulting behavior and determine the seismic cycle during the late Quaternary.
3. to develop the use of paleoseismic techniques for regions with relatively low seismic strain rates.