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GSA Special Papers
Natural Hazards in El Salvador
Author(s)
Geological Society of America

Volume
375
Copyright:
Geological Society of America
Geological Society of America
ISBN print:
9780813723754
Publication date:
January 01, 2004
Book Chapter
Seismicity and tectonics of El Salvador
Author(s)
James W. Dewey
U.S. Geological Survey, MS 966, Box 25046, Denver, Colorado 80225, USA dewey@usgs.gov
;
James W. Dewey
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Randall A. White
U.S. Geological Survey, 345 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA
;
Randall A. White
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Douglas A. Hernández
Servicio Nacional de Estudios Territoriales (SNET), San Salvador, El Salvador
Douglas A. Hernández
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Published:January 01, 2004
The large-scale plate-tectonics framework of El Salvador was defined in the “plate-tectonics revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s, but important issues related to seismic hazards depend on details that have been only recently, or are not yet, understood. Present evidence suggests that coupling across the interface-thrust zone beneath coastal El Salvador is sufficient to produce occasional interface-thrust earthquakes as large as M ∼8. The rate of such earthquakes is determined by the percentage of relative plate motion that is accumulated as elastic strain on the thrust-fault interface between the Cocos and Caribbean plates, which appears to be lower than in...
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