Inversion of field data in fault tectonics to obtain the regional stress ? I. Single phase fault populations: a new method of computing the stress tensor

Abstract

We attempt a general definition of the inverse problem of computing the components of the regional stress tensor from a set of field data including the measurements of the strike and dip of several faults, and the directions and senses of relative motion along these faults (as indicated by slickenslides). In previous treatments of this problem, no experimental errors could be taken into account except those in measuring the pitch of slickenslides; thus, errors in the orientation of the fault (strike and dip), which have considerable practical importance, were neglected. In our work, all experimental errors in the field measurements are taken into account, so that the agreement between the computed stress tensor and the set of field measurements can be rigorously checked.