The project has received 4 years 12 millions from FRIPRO and will produce a MOOC on intracontinental earthquakes in collaboration with LINK. It will include interviews of the scientific team and collaborators, videos produced during fieldwork and laboratory analyses, as well as animations, graphics and user forums.
The project involves researchers from geosciences and physics, and collaborates with the universities of Cambridge, Leeds and Bayreuth.
The planned start date is 1 January 2023.
About the project
CONTINENT - Conditions for earthquake nucleation in the lower crust. The primary objective is to determine the state of stress of earthquake-generating faults in the lower continental crust. The project proposes to achieve this goal using cutting-edge, novel microanalytical techniques on samples of seismogenic faults exhumed from the lower crust ("fossil earthquakes") to measure the residual stress retained in mineral grains subjected to earthquakes. Measurements will be coupled to numerical models of stress distribution in lower-crustal fault systems. The project will provide for the first time a comprehensive view of the state of stress in faults that represent the most common earthquake source in the lower crust of the continental interiors.