Global postseismic stress diffusion and fault interaction at long distances

By means of a new theoretical model of global postseismic deformation we co mpute the time-depending postseismic stress field associated with eight of the greatest events of the century on an area extending for almost half of the Earth's surface. We evaluate the stress transferred by these big earthq uakes to all the seismogenic structures of the Pacific belt that have gener ated earthquakes with M greater than or equal to5 in the last years. We dis cuss the effect of this stress field on the state of the faults: the distri bution of favoured and not favoured events is not uniform. The modeling sug gests the existence of a physical connection among the patterns of release of seismic moment by the different plate margins of the Pacific area and th e possibility of a self-organised geometrical configuration of the tectonic plates system. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.