Distributed and localized faulting in extensional settings: Insight from the north Ethiopian Rift-Afar transition area

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Abstract

Extensional fault systems in the Earth's crust can exhibit two end-member geometries that we identify as distributed and localized faulting regimes. A satellite image analysis of fault populations from the Main Ethiopian Rift-Afar area reveals that the rift architecture contains these two faulting regimes. The occurrence of these regimes reveals a jump in the scale of fault segmentation and linkage. Strain localization at rift border zones exhibits particularly large-scale fault linkage and a power law size distribution. This regime replaces prior distributed fault systems, showing small-scale fault linkage and an exponential size distribution. The distributed faulting is interpreted as confined to the thick trap basalt carapace. We show that continental fault systems can develop by a combination of these two geometries, and we demonstrate how to quantitatively decipher the jump between them. Copyright 2008 by the American Geophysical Union.

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Soliva, R., & Schulz, R. A. (2008). Distributed and localized faulting in extensional settings: Insight from the north Ethiopian Rift-Afar transition area. Tectonics, 27(2). https://doi.org/10.1029/2007TC002148

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