Oral Presentation

Stress in the lithosphere is a fundamental quantity that governs nearly every aspect of the earthquake cycle: plate motions originate it, deformation is driven by it, faults store it, and earthquakes relieve it. But direct observations, typically from drilling boreholes for scientific or industrial purposes, are extremely rare due to the difficulty of making such measurements. As a result, estimating, or even constraining the 4D stress field continues to rank as one of the grand challenges in tectonophysics. The Community Stress Model (CSM) was initially created during SCEC3 to collect models of stress and stressing rate, as well as available observations of stress, and serve as a resource for researchers wanting to use or further develop stress estimates. In this presentation, we will (re)introduce the SCEC community to the stress models and related data currently available as part of the CSM. We will describe the ways we have made use of CSM contributions to estimate constraints on absolute differential stress magnitude and to quantify the spatial scales of crustal stress heterogeneity. We will describe ongoing efforts to combine results from multiple Community Models into constraints on in situ fault tractions, and to develop improved estimates of in situ stress orientation. We will announce the release of the new web-based CSM viewer, which is designed to significantly reduce barriers for new users considering employing a CSM contribution in their own research. Finally, we will describe some future opportunities for both improving CSM and integrating with other community efforts as SCEC shifts to a statewide focus.