Patterns of contemporary horizontal stress orientation in the Earth's crust derived from the World Stress Map Database 2025

Abstract

Knowledge of the present-day stress field of the Earth's crust is essential for understanding geodynamic processes, as well as for the exploration and management of geo-reservoirs. The World Stress Map (WSM) project provides the only open-access global database of crustal stress information. To mark the project's 40th anniversary, the WSM database has been substantially updated, and now contains more than twice the number of data records on the orientation of maximum horizontal stress (SHmax) in comparison to the previous release in 2016. The new database includes 100 842 quality-ranked data records documenting the SHmax orientation in the Earth's crust. As stress data records are clustered around plate boundaries and in sedimentary basins, we provide mean SHmax orientation estimates on regular global grids of 2, 1, 0.5 and 0.2° using search radii between 50 and 500 km to facilitate the analysis of stress patterns. The results reveal that in intraplate regions, where stress data density has increased significantly, the earlier hypothesis that plate boundary forces and relative plate motion primarily control the SHmax orientation needs to be revised. The SHmax orientation rotates in some areas by more than 50° over spatial scales of 50–500 km. Two notable examples include an ∼ 50° rotation of the SHmax orientation in the Alpine foreland, from N–S in the East to NW–SE in the West, and SHmax orientation rotations > 50° over distances of less than 100 km in eastern Australia.