1. Alaska 1964 Earthquake Tectonic Deformation
Veronica Schnitzer EPSC 330

2. Background Info Occurred March 27, 1964 Prince William Sound, Alaska
Magnitude 9.2
128 deaths
$311 million in property loss
Extreme uplift
Landslides
usgs.gov

3. Coseismic deformation
George Plafker, 1965
Saw uplift and subsidence visible on land
Measured change in barnacle line
Drew contour map
Plafker, 1965

4. Plafker, 1965

5. Postseismic deformation
Savage & Plafker, 1991
Measured postseismic uplift and subsidence pattern
Looked at change in annual mean sea levels
5 year postseismic slip
100 year flow in aesthenosphere
Savage & Plafker, 1991

6. Postseismic deformation
Zweck et al, 2002
GPS, triangulation, leveling data
Created models to measure distribution of slip
Found more than one time-decaying component
Creep on fault
Viscous/viscoelastic relaxation

8. Conclusion
The Alaska 1964 earthquake was the second most powerful ever recorded
It resulted in extreme uplift and subsidence on land
Coseismic measurements showed strong evidence for a subduction zone
Postseismic measurements showed two time components of postseismic deformation: short term postseismic slip, and long term viscous/viscoelastic flow.

9. References
Plafker, G., Tectonic Deformation Associated with the 1964 Alaska Earthquake. American Association for the Advancement of Science 148, no. 3678, pp
Savage, J.C. & Plafker, G., Tide Gage Measurements of Uplift Alone the South Coast of Alaska. Journal of Geophysical Research 96, no. B3, pp
Stover, C.W. & Coffman, J.L., Seismicity of the United States (Revised). U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper Retrieved from
Zweck, C., Freymueller, J.T. & Cohen, S.C., The 1964 great Alaska earthquake: present day and cumulative postseismic deformation in the western Kenia Peninsula. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 132, pp