Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology
University of Nevada, Reno
Reno, Nevada 89557-0178, USA
Office location: Scrugham Engineering/ Mines, Room 315
Office Phone: 1 (775) 784-6436
Fax: 1 (775) 784-1709
Email Bill
For Publication list and .pdf files see:
Bill's Curriculum Vitae
The mountains of the Basin and Range were created in response to slow distributed province-wide extension that broke the Earth's crust along fault lines. Cumulative displacement along these faults over long periods of time built, and is still building, topographic relief, i.e. the valleys and ranges of the province. Earthquakes associated with the infrequent slip on these faults generate the seismicity felt by people who live in the Great Basin and Sierra Nevada.
In my research I precisely measure this active crustal deformation using geodetic techniques such as the Global Positioning System (GPS). From these measurements I infer the style and distribution of Earth surface deformation that is a direct consequence of continent-scale tectonic processes. My main interest is in relating these motions to the organization of seismogenic faulting, and inferring the source of stresses in the lithosphere. With GPS we can better understand the processes that control gradual deformation of the western U.S. continental interior, and hence better understand the physics of Earth deformation and the source of potentially damaging earthquakes.
The forces that drive these lithospheric-scale motions are attributed to 1) interactions between the North American, Pacific and Juan de Fuca plates, and 2) internally generated gravitational forces that cause the high-elevation interior to slowly collapse, and 3) tractions at the base of the lithosphere that resist or drive deformation. Modeling of lithospheric-scale deformation helps me to distinguish between these different causes and to infer how stresses are transmitted large distances from the plate boundary, causing active deformation of the western U.S. interior.