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Fault healing promotes high-frequency earthquakes in laboratory experiments and on natural faults

Overview of attention for article published in Nature, October 2012
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Title
Fault healing promotes high-frequency earthquakes in laboratory experiments and on natural faults
Published in
Nature, October 2012
DOI 10.1038/nature11512
Pubmed ID
Authors

Gregory C. McLaskey, Amanda M. Thomas, Steven D. Glaser, Robert M. Nadeau

Abstract

Faults strengthen or heal with time in stationary contact, and this healing may be an essential ingredient for the generation of earthquakes. In the laboratory, healing is thought to be the result of thermally activated mechanisms that weld together micrometre-sized asperity contacts on the fault surface, but the relationship between laboratory measures of fault healing and the seismically observable properties of earthquakes is at present not well defined. Here we report on laboratory experiments and seismological observations that show how the spectral properties of earthquakes vary as a function of fault healing time. In the laboratory, we find that increased healing causes a disproportionately large amount of high-frequency seismic radiation to be produced during fault rupture. We observe a similar connection between earthquake spectra and recurrence time for repeating earthquake sequences on natural faults. Healing rates depend on pressure, temperature and mineralogy, so the connection between seismicity and healing may help to explain recent observations of large megathrust earthquakes which indicate that energetic, high-frequency seismic radiation originates from locations that are distinct from the geodetically inferred locations of large-amplitude fault slip.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 141 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Japan 2 1%
Italy 1 <1%
Norway 1 <1%
Switzerland 1 <1%
Unknown 136 96%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 34 24%
Researcher 32 23%
Student > Master 17 12%
Professor > Associate Professor 12 9%
Student > Doctoral Student 7 5%
Other 24 17%
Unknown 15 11%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Earth and Planetary Sciences 79 56%
Engineering 16 11%
Physics and Astronomy 6 4%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 3 2%
Materials Science 3 2%
Other 5 4%
Unknown 29 21%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 November 2012.
All research outputs
#15,255,201
of 22,684,168 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#84,260
of 90,649 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#116,284
of 184,188 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#962
of 1,076 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,684,168 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 22nd percentile – i.e., 22% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 90,649 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 99.1. This one is in the 3rd percentile – i.e., 3% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 184,188 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 26th percentile – i.e., 26% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 1,076 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 7th percentile – i.e., 7% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.