Hawaii earthquake
Western Geologist and Highly Allocthonous have already weighed in on this, but I figured I might want to float a highly speculative hypothesis. On Hawaii, most of the volcanism occurs on the southern half of the island, mainly from the Mona Loa and Kilauea volcanoes. Both of these volcanoes generally erupt from a series of NE/SW trending rifts- for the probable reason, see Western Geologists’ post on the regional stress field. If magma emplacement is causing substantial spreading in the southern part of the island, but not in the extinct north, then an accommodation transform fault may exist to allow that. Slip on such a fault would, as far as I can tell, be basically the right direction for the observed motion. 
Hopefully the real seismologists will explain what actually happened at this week's GSA meeting. Is anyone going? Anyone? Bueller?
3 comments:
Definitely an interesting idea.
I really wish I could make it to GSA. This is the first GSA I've missed since 2000. I can only make it to 2 meetings this academic year though, and GSA lost out.
Just wanted to let you know that this post has been included in the third installment of the Philosophia Naturalis blog carnival (dedicated to the physical sciences and technology). You can see it all here:
http://geekcounterpoint.net/files/GC046B.html
Lorne Ipsum
Chief Geek, Geek Counterpoint blog & podcast
Philosophia Naturalis blog carnival is now up here:
http://geekcounterpoint.net/files/GC046B.html
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