ALBERT

Description: We review the development of understanding of the seismicity and tectonic structure of the New Madrid seismic zone and the upper Mississippi embayment. The broad framework of a failed intracontinental rift with reactivated seismogenic faults was not established until the mid-1970s. By the early 1990s a much more detailed knowledge of the rift and the current seismicity has been gained but fundamental questions remain. The 25 papers of this Special Issue of Seismological Research Letters convey the location of the most recent research front in such diverse fields as seismology, paleoseismology, seismic and potential-field investigation of rift structure, neotectonic deformation, and seismic hazard estimation and response. The new information content of these papers, considered ensemble, is enormous and highlights the tremendous progress made since the 1970s. These current studies, in turn, sharpen the focus on remaining outstanding problems of seismogenesis in the New Madrid seismic zone. We close with a discussion of what we believe will be the important foci of research in the 1990s.

Description: Five high resolution seismic reflection lines (24 channel Mini-Sosie data with 1 s record length) were acquired across the margins of Crowley’s Ridge in northeast Arkansas during the summer of 1990 to test the hypothesis that Crowley’s Ridge is fault bounded. Three of the lines traversed the margins of the northern segment of the ridge near Jonesboro, Arkansas, and the other two were located south of Jonesboro across the margins of the southern segment. All five lines revealed subsurface faulting of the Paleozoic through Eocene (Wilcox) sections beneath the ridge margins. The data did not resolve the uppermost 0.1 s of two way travel time so it is not possible to determine if the Pliocene and younger sediments have been faulted. Thus, we can not determine if the ridge truly owes its topographic relief to fault displacement or if Tertiary faulting controlled subsequent Quaternary river incision. At one site, however, it does appear that the ridge margin is a fault scarp because the ridge height is the same as the structural relief on the ridge-bounding fault and fault displacement can be traced into the shallowest reflectors (0.15 s).

Description: During 1990 we collected eight lines (11.5 km) of shallow seismic reflection data across the Bootheel lineament, a discontinuous feature that extends about 135 km in a north-northeast direction through northeastern Arkansas and southeastern Missouri. The profiles image reflectors at depths between about 55 m to 800 m. Gentle folding with wavelengths of about 800 m and amplitudes of 10 m to 25 m is evident on nearly every profile, generally coinciding with the surface traces of the lineament. We interpret our lines to show a complex zone of strike-slip deformation consisting of multiple flower structures, with deformation at least as young as the Eocene/Quaternary unconformity.

Description: The largest historical earthquake in South Carolina, and in the southeastern US, occurred in the Coastal Plain province, probably northwest of Charleston, in 1886. Locations for aftershocks associated with this earthquake, estimated using intensities based on newspaper accounts, defined a northwest trending zone about 250 km long that was at least 100 km wide in the Coastal Plain but widened to a northeast trending zone in the Piedmont. The subsequent historical and instrumentally recorded seismicity in South Carolina images the 1886 aftershock zone. Except for a few scattered earthquakes and a swarm of shallow (≤ 4 km deep), small (ML ≤ 2.5), primarily reverse faulting earthquakes that occurred along the flanks of a granite pluton about 60 km northwest of Columbia, the seismicity in the Piedmont province has been associated with water level changes in reservoirs. Reservoir induced seismicity (RIS) is shallow (≤ 6 km deep), primarily strike-slip or thrust faulting corresponding to an inferred maximum horizontal compressive stress oriented approximately N 60° E. Instrumentally recorded seismicity in the Coastal Plain province occurs in 3 seismic zones or clusters: Middleton Place-Summerville (MPSSZ), Adams Run (ARC), and Bowman (BSZ). Approximately 68% of the Coastal Plain earthquakes occur in the MPSSZ, a north trending zone about 22 km long and 12 km wide, lying about 20 km northwest of Charleston. The hypocenters of MPSSZ earthquakes range in depth from near the surface to almost 12 km. Thrust, strike-slip, and some normal faulting are indicated by the fault plane solutions for Coastal Plain earthquakes. The maximum horizontal compressive stress, inferred from the P-axes of the fault plane solutions, is oriented NE-SW in the shallow crust (〈 9 km deep) but appears to be diffusely E-W between 9 to 12 km deep. Although there is localized variability, the current seismicity and associated faulting in South Carolina probably represent a regional response to the NE-SW maximum horizontal compressive stress prevalent throughout eastern North America.