Abstract
Two continent-scale ice sheets—Antarctica and Greenland—currently exist on earth. The interiors of both continents are virtually aseismic. Is this coincidental or does a causal connection exist between the two observations? An examination of this question is the subject of this paper. It is concluded that with a few reasonable assumptions, ice sheets will indeed inhibit earthquakes by stabilizing potentially seismogenic faults in the underlying brittle crust. This same mechanism may also provide an explanation for the intense late-glacial faulting in Fennoscandia reported elsewhere in this volume.
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Johnston, A.C. (1989). The Effect of Large Ice Sheets on Earthquake Genesis. In: Earthquakes at North-Atlantic Passive Margins: Neotectonics and Postglacial Rebound. NATO ASI Series, vol 266. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2311-9_34
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2311-9_34
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