CASMI

Creating A Stress Map Interactively

Oliver Heidbach, Daniel Kurfeß and Jens Höhne

May 2008

1. Introduction

CASMI is a software tool for generating publication quality stress maps. It has a graph-
ical user interface and is the interactive, stand-alone cousin of CASMO with a wider
range of functionality. CASMI version 2.0 includes the World Stress Map database re-
lease 2008. The CASMI software can freely be distributed under the terms of a 2-clause
BSD licence, see the Info.

CASMI uses Perl/Tk for its graphical user interface, where all the settings for the de-
sired stress maps are made. This interface also calls the C-shell and AWK scripts that
automatically generate the stress maps by using GMT (the Generic Mapping Tools).

CASMI version 2.0 comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

1.1. System Requirements

CASMI runs under Unix-like systems such as Linux. In addition to a running X Window
System generally needed for graphical user interfaces under Unix, CASMI depends on
the following software packages:

• Gmake (the GNU make utility)

• Perl (version 5.6.1 or higher)

• Perl/Tk (the perl module Tk.pm; version 800.023 or higher)

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 • Csh (the C-shell)

• Gawk (the GNU Project’s implementation of AWK)

• GMT (the Generic Mapping Tools; version 3.4.1 or higher)

• ImageMagick

• Ghostscript

Problems may occur with older versions of Perl, Perl/Tk, or GMT. The convert program
(from the ImageMagick software suite) is used to convert the map files generated by
GMT in PostScript format to GIF. It is needed to display stress maps in CASMI’s
graphical user interface. Alternatively, you can also view created stress maps manually
by a PostScript previewer like Ghostscript ($ gs casmi-output.ps).

Bug reports can be sent to: [email protected] .

1.2. Installation

It is assumed that all GMT commands are in your PATH environment variable, such
that $ <GMT_command> will work. You then do the following:

1. Unpack CASMI in a directory of your choice:

$ tar -xvvzf casmi.tar.gz

2. Move into the CASMI directory:

$ cd casmi

3. Run the configuration script:

$ csh ./configure_script

4. Build the smoothing routines:

$ cd smooth
$ make clean; make

5. Add the CASMI directory to your PATH environment variable:

$ export PATH=$PATH:<path_to_CASMI_directory> (for bash-like shells)
$ set path = ( $path <path_to_CASMI_directory> ) (for csh-like shells)
Also add the appropriate line into your shell startup file, such as ~/.bashrc or
~/.cshrc, respectively.

6. You start CASMI by:

$ casmi

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1.3. General Information

The stress maps display the orientations of the maximum horizontal compressional stress
SH . The length of a stress symbol represents its data quality, with A being the highest
quality and E the lowest. A-quality means that the orientation of SH is accurate to within
±15◦ , B-quality to within ±20◦ , C-quality to within ±25◦ , and D-quality to within ±40◦ .
For the most methods these quality classes are defined through the standard deviation
of SH . In general, A-, B- and C-quality stress indicators are considered reliable for
the use in analyzing stress patterns and the interpretation of geodynamic processes.
D-quality data are considered to yield questionable tectonic stress orientations [Zob92,
SMH+ 03]. E-quality data records do not provide sufficient information or have standard
deviations greater than 40◦ . These data records are mainly for well bores, contain no
stress information, but are only kept for book keeping purposes that these data have
been processed. The abbreviations for tectonic regimes used here are: “NF” for normal
faulting, “SS” for strike-slip faulting, “TF” for thrust faulting, and “U” for an unknown
regime.

More information on the data and stress maps can be found at the World Stress Map
(WSM) website: www.world-stress-map.org .

Usage

In a number of menus in CASMI, there is the choice between “yes” and “no” at the top.
The map will only be affected if “yes” is selected. Sometimes there are several choices
and a User Defined button at the bottom followed by other entries. For example File
→ Page Settings → Page Size: If you don’t like the predefined paper sizes and enter
your own paper sizes, you also have to press the User Defined button. Otherwise those
changes will have no effect. Any selection in a window must be confirmed by pressing
the Apply or the Ok button. Apply leaves the window open, Ok closes it. Cancel closes
the window without saving any changes.

The map will be generated by pressing the Make Map! menu button. It will take some
time, so don’t press this button twice or otherwise the map will be generated twice.
Messages will be directed to the shell from where you have started CASMI. If you save
your settings or your map you have to type the filename extension explicitly.

CASMI creates a number of files in the current working directory (where $ casmi
is started), called casmi-output.gmt, casmi-output.ps, etc. Those are overwritten
when a new map is generated, and they are deleted when CASMI is quit. It also cre-
ates three temporary directories in your home directory ($HOME) called .casmi-Temp,
.casmi-Temp1, and .casmi-Temp2. In these directories the extracted data and other
temporary files are stored.

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CASMI doesn’t check your entries. For example, if a pen size shall be given and instead
of a (sensible) number you enter “sometext” this will be accepted. However, GMT will
give you error messages and the map will possibly be damaged. If you need help with
any GMT command you get all necessary information by $ man <GMT_command>.

1.4. Reference

If you use the stress maps in publications, please quote the World Stress Map (WSM)
database:
Reinecker, J.; O. Heidbach, M. Tingay, B. Sperner, and B. Müller (2005): The 2005
release of the World Stress Map (available online at www.world-stress-map.org).
In addition, please reference the usage of CASMI:
Heidbach, O., Kurfeß, D., Höhne, J. (2008). CASMI – An interactive software tool
for stress map plotting using the 2008 release of the World Stress Map data base
(available online at www.world-stress-map.org).
The stress maps were created using the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) by P. Wessel
and W.H.F. Smith [WS91]. The used plate boundaries are courtesy of Peter Bird’s
digital model for plate boundaries PB2002 [Bir03]. CASMI’s basic scripts were written
by Veronika Wehrle and Stefan Hettel.

2. File menu

2.1. Page Settings

The Page Settings window allows the user to change the page parameters of the map.
These are the page size, orientation, margins.

You can change the width of the map via Plot Width or by the page width. Its height
will then be determined by the map range you have selected. Left Margin and Page Size
will determine the page width. If the Bottom Margin of the page is too small, the WSM
release information text will not appear.

Note that some other page parameters can be changed by menu Extras → Change GMT
Defaults. For example, if you want to prepare a map for a poster with a known paper
colour, you could set the page background colour to this colour.

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2.2. Save Map As

This allows you to save the map in several formats (GIF, PDF, PS). The extension
has to be typed in the File name field. The displayed image always appears in the
current working directory as casmi-output.ps and casmi-output.gif. These files will
be removed when CASMI is closed.

2.3. Save Stress Data (ASCII)

The selected stress data (in file StressData.select in the current working directory)
will be copied to the given filename. Data format is like the WSM format:
longitude latitude azimuth type quality regime depth sitecode

2.4. Save/Load Plot Settings

These menu items allow you to save your settings to a file. This allows you to adjust
the settings for several geographic ranges in your interest like “whole Earth”, “Europe”,
“Romania”, for example.

Note that the file selector first starts with the root directory (“/”). If you close it and
start it another time, it will pop up with the current working directory. This is a bug
in the module Tk::FileSelect which cannot be changed at the moment. The filename
extension .cas can make it easier to recognize your files, but you can use any filename
you want. Note that the extension must be typed as well.

Defaults for CASMI

CASMI will look in your home directory for a file called casmi_defaults.cas. In this
file all the default settings of your parameters are stored. This may become very useful
if you don’t like the default colour palette table or other things. You can change this
default file either directly with a text editor or by using CASMI, File → Save Plot
Settings and overwriting your ~/casmi_defaults.cas file. If there is no such file in
your home directory, CASMI will use its internal defaults.

3. Data Parameters menu

This menu allows you to control the output of the stress data. Also user supplied data
can be plotted. Such data must be in WSM format.

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From the data a *.prep file will be created. If you add new data to your database you
must delete the old *.prep file to see this new data plotted.

3.1. WSM Stress Data

You can choose the data that is to be included in the stress map. The data
can be filtered by quality (A–D, and E where only the location, not the
SH azimuth is valid), depth range, regime, and indicator type. For a de-
tailed explanation of the different methods/types and qualities please see the
description of the WSM data at the WSM website.

FMS type events

The button for selecting data resulting from Single Focal Mechanism solutions (FMS)
is not located under the Type selection. You find it under FMS type events, where you
can additionally filter out subsets of FMS type data that you consider to be strongly
influenced by plate boundaries. FMS type data is subdivided into 7 subsets in terms of
the plate boundary type located next to the individual data point. For each of these 7
subsets you can (1) exclude all events within a certain distance from the plate boundary,
(2) exclude events with the corresponding regime within a certain distance from the
plate boundary, or (3) exclude PBE events (possible Plate Boundary Events) as defined
by the WSM team.

So-called Plate Boundary Events might occur near weak transform plate boundaries and
might have a higher error for the stress azimuth. You will find more information on the
criteria for FMS data to be flagged as PBE by the WSM team in the appendix A or at
the World Stress Map website (www.world-stress-map.org).

Please pay attention to the following two points: (1) The regime abbreviations here are
more general than in the Regime selection above: “SS” means SS, NS, and TS, while
“NF” means NF and NS, and “TF” means TF and TS. (2) While normally you select
things in CASMI by pressing a button, here you deselect (exclude) data by pressing
the buttons. This way you can generate a 3-stage filter for each of the 7 subsets. For
example, you select “exclude all events < distance of 100 km”, “exclude SS events < 200
km” and “exclude PBE events” for the CTF subset: Then FMS data near continental
transform faults will not include data flagged as PBE by the WSM team, it will not
include SS, NS, and TS events within 200 km range from the transform fault, and it
will not include any data within 100 km from the plate boundary. When you deselect
(release) the Focal Mechanism solutions, Single (FMS) button, all these plate boundary
filters do not have any effect, as no FMS data at all will be included in the stress map.

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If you choose a depth range, e.g. from 4.5 km to 10 km, you also have to select the Depth
→ User Defined button, otherwise data from all depths will be plotted.

3.2. Symbols WSM

This menu allows you to change the appearance of the WSM stress symbols.

3.3. Stress Legend

Here the position and size of the stress legend can be selected. It is not possible to give
an explicit size of the legend. As a guideline, use “middle” for an A4, “huge” for an A0
map.

3.4. User Stress Data

It is also possible to provide your own dataset for plotting, by the Select your data file
button. It must have the same format as the WSM data. The options are the same as
for regular WSM data.

3.5. Symbols User Data

The same functionality as menu item Symbols WSM, but concerning the data provided
as User Stress Data.

4. Map Parameters menu

4.1. Set Range and Projection

Here you select the map area and projection. “rectangular” means that instead of
west/east/north/south you enter the lower left (south/west) and upper right corner
(north/east) instead. This is useful for those projections where lines of constant lati-
tude/longitude are not straight lines. Minutes and seconds can be given via the normal
GMT syntax (lat:mm:ss). The “Orthographic” projection shows the Earth as seen from
space, and the “Mollweide” projection shows the whole Earth. For both projections
the area selected has only the effect of setting some defaults like the central meridian
or the projection centre. Those defaults can also be changed explicitly by the Change

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Defaults button. If your map range includes minutes or seconds, you may have to
set those defaults by hand (as the C-shell scripts can’t use their normal arithmetic on
minutes/seconds).

There is also a Whole Earth button included. Remember that it is not possible to plot
over the horizon using cylindrical projections. The “Orthographic” and the “Mollweide”
projection set the range to the whole Earth internally.

Change (Projection) Defaults

Except for “Mercator” the other projections need some extra variables. These are the
Projection Center, two Standard Parallels and the Central Meridian.

The defaults for the Standard Parallels are the upper third for the Upper and the lower
third for the Lower Parallel. The default for the lat/lon of the Projection Center is given
by the centre of the selected area. The default for the Central Meridian is 0 Longitude
(Greenwich). If the map range includes minutes and seconds check if the defaults are
sensible.
Projection Proj. Center Standard Parallels C. Meridian
Longitude Latitude Upper Lower
Albers Conic Equal Area x x x x
Lambert Conic Conformal x x x x
Lambert Azi. Equal Area x x
Orthographic x x
Mollweide x

4.2. Map Attributes

A number of parameters control the appearance of the map. (Pen) Size is given in points,
Color in red/green/blue (0–255/0–255/0–255) or a grey value: 0(black)–255(white). You
can use the arrow keys to navigate in the entries.

• Coastline Resolution: The -D switch in GMT. This really depends on the scale of
your map.

• Minimum Lake/Island Size: The minimum feature size (km2 ) of lakes and islands.
This is influenced by the next item:

• Coastline Level:

– 1: Only continent-sea boundaries (i.e. neither lakes nor islands are plotted)
– 2: also lakes, islands (with a certain minimum size)

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 – 3: also islands in lakes, lakes in islands
– 4: also lakes in islands in lakes and vice versa

• Coastlines: Colour and pen size of the coastlines. Colour of continents and oceans.
Write “no” into the fields if no colour for ocean/continent shall be used (e.g.
topography plot with coastlines). If you want to plot bathymetry write “no” for
Ocean Fill Color.

• Political Boundaries: Pen size and colour.

• Plate Boundaries: Pen size and colour. The data file for the plate boundaries
can be changed in Extras → Change Files/Directories. If you use the default plate
boundary file for a publication, please reference Peter Bird’s updated digital model
for plate boundaries [Bir03].

4.3. Topography

This window allows you to plot topography. The options also apply to any other
grid file you would like to plot. The default topography file is DATA/dtm5.grd with
the colour palette table topo_col.cpt. Both can be changed in Extras → Change
Files/Directories. The scale bar will require careful use if not to produce ugly results.

• Contours: You can choose to contour the topography by setting the Contour Inter-
val, the Annotation Interval, and the Pen Attributes. Here the full pen attributes
are given: width/colour/texture.

• Illumination: Illuminated topography looks better, but also takes a little longer
to generate. The Direction of Light counts the angle (in degrees) positive from
north, e.g. 90 means light from east. The Normalisation Factor is for the intensity,
a value between 0 and 1. The smaller this value is, the less is the illumination
effect. Other possible values are “default” (which defaults to -Nt) or “e<factor>”
which uses a Laplace distribution. See GMT’s grdgradient -N option for details.

• Scale: A lot of try and error will be necessary to produce good looking results. The
position of centre/top for “horizontal” scale (or centre/left for “vertical” scale) in
the selected units (cm/inches) with respect to the lower left corner of the map can
be given. The clearance rectangle is underlain beneath the scale. You can give
either a colour or “no” which means that no clearance rectangle will be produced.
Note that up to now the rectangle will be clipped at map boundaries.

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4.4. Map Title

If you want to title your map, here’s the place to go. You can enter any title you
like, but note that it must be in parentheses if it’s longer than one word. Octal escape
characters are allowed and necessary if you want to use any special characters like the
german “ä”. If you use octal escape sequences but they aren’t plotted, please see if in
your .gmtdefault WANT EURO FONT is set to TRUE.

For the position of the label there are three possibilities: “Centered” is the normal
position centred above the map, “Upper Left” means the upper left corner of the map
or explicit placing via x/y coordinates. Don’t be disturbed by the word “default” if you
choose “Upper Left”. The real default means centred.

4.5. Map Information

Here you can enter the gridline spacing, annotations for it, and the map scale. The
default position for the map scale is not very fortunate as it collides with the WSM
labeltext. So normally you will have to enter the lon/lat coordinates of the scale as well.
The pen size of the scale label can be changed in .gmtdefaults → Label font size.

The info string contains information about the projection used. Its location at the lower
right corner of the map cannot be altered.

4.6. Overview Map

The proposed range of the overview map is 10 degrees greater than the range of the
map. This may not work if the range contains minutes or seconds. Four positions are
possible. The width of the overview map is either “default” (1/4 map width) or can be
set explicitly. Several other attributes can be given for the overview map.

5. Extras menu

5.1. Change Files/Directories

Here some data files can be changed. If you want to change the defaults for
those files (and not only the files for this session) you can save your changes in
~/casmi_defaults.cas (see section 2.4). The PostScript settings mean the following:
If you want to append more PostScript to your map later, (i.e., you can plot it but not

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print it) you have to change it from “no” to “yes”. This is equivalent to ending the last
GMT command with an -O option.

5.2. Change GMT Defaults

Nothing that is done here couldn’t also be done directly in your .gmtdefaults file.
However, if you don’t want to change your .gmtdefaults, you can do it here, as the
parameters are set locally via gmtset.

5.3. Smoothing the data

For general information about the smoothing of stress data and the program used, please
see the dissertation of Veronika Wehrle [Weh98].

CASMI also provides an interface to the program smooth of V. Wehrle. Three methods
are provided by this program:

• Smoothing stress data (menu item: Plot smoothed data). This is a useful first
step also to see how the different parameters affect the algorithm.

• Smoothing and gridding stress data (menu item: Plot gridded smoothed data).
This is useful to plot averages over the stress field.

• Calculating trajectories (menu item: Plot smoothed trajectories). This is an ad-

vanced feature. Please have a look into the reference above to make sure you
understand what you are doing here.

Each of the three smoothing menu windows is actually two windows in one. The left
half is for plotting the information. It will be used after the right half, which generates
this information. First to this right half:

All three windows have the same options for smooth. If the (right) Smooth WSM Stress
Data button is pressed, smooth is called through the shell with the options provided.
Then only those WSM data will be smoothed that is selected in the Data Parameters
→ WSM Stress Data menu. That means that all of the applied data filters in the Select
WSM Stress Data window do take effect. E.g., if you only select A quality data of type
FMS, only those points will be used for smooth.

There is an additional data filter in the smoothing menu windows: Range W/E/S/N.
Only those data records are passed to smooth that are within this region (+ the search
Radius for smoothing). By default it is set to the range that you have selected in the

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Map Parameters → Set Range and Projection menu window. You may want to change
this to decrease boundary effects of the smoothed stress field.

You can also do this manually (and thereby filter data by other criteria or give your own
data, for example) by saving the selected data (File → Save Stress Data (ASCII)) and
then selecting this as a new input file (Change Smooth Input File button). When you
press the Smooth data from given Input File button, only this data is handed over to
smooth. Please pay attention: When you press the Smooth WSM Stress Data button,
the input filename information is overwritten. So do not press the Smooth WSM Stress
Data button between Change Smooth Input File and Smooth data from given Input
File! Besides, the input file for smooth must be in lat/lon format! That means, you
will have to change the columns 1 and 2 manually as the “Saved Stress Data” will be in
lon/lat format. Do this via awk or:

$ perl -i.lonlat -p -e ’s/^(.*?)\s+(.*?)\s+(.*)$/$2 $1 $3/g’ <data.dat>

This will save the original data and swap the first two columns if whitespace is the
separator.

Depending on the size of selected data the program smooth will take time (most for
trajectories, least for simply smoothed data). The default output file for smooth is
casmi-smooth.sdat for smoothed data, casmi-smooth.grdm for gridded maps, and
casmi-smooth.trjs for trajectories.

The left Ok/Apply button is for plotting the gained smoothed stress orientations. This
means you can select different colours/textures for your smoothed data without calling
smooth again.

Options for smoothing

Parameter possible values / Explanation

default value
Input File wsm.dat Format for input file:
latitude longitude azimuth type quality ...
Output File casmi-smooth.sdat for smoothed data
casmi-smooth.grdm for gridded data
casmi-smooth.trjs for trajectories
Lambda (λ) 12 Controls the degree of smoothing. Smooth-
ing is emphasized for high λ, fidelity to the
data for small λ.

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Parameter possible values / Explanation
default value
Neighbours (N) (none) Either a number of neighbours (N) or a
search radius (R) must be given for the
smoothing. For non-isotropically distributed
data a search radius is normally the better
choice but see the reference for more infor-
mation.
Radius (R) 100 Search radius in km.
Quality Weight- y1/0.75/0.5/0.25 If you want no quality weighting, insert “n”.
ing
Range (the map range) Defines from which range WSM stress data
is taken for smoothing.
Weight Method twf tricubic weight function
pdf/n power distance weight function, n being the
power
Together with a search radius R the following can be used:
ntwf number normalized tricubic weight function
npdf/n number normalized power distance weight
function
nbtwf number and bin normalized tricubic weight
function
nbpdf/n number and bin normalized power distance
weight function
Together with N neighbours the following can be used:
rtwf rescaled tricubic weight function
rpdf/n rescaled power distance weight function
Ignore Option n/3 Applied when calculating trajecto-
ries/gridded maps via the search radius.
A datapoint is not calculated
n/α if less than α datapoints lie within search ra-
dius.
w/α if the sum of all weights (distance × quality)
< α.
qα if the sum of all quality weights is less than
α.
Iterations 10 Maximum number of iterations before the
program stops.
Deviation [no] Calculate sort of average deviation when
writing gridded maps or trajectories; the av-
erage deviation is written in the 4th column
of outfile.grdm and in the 3rd column of out-
file.trjs. Additional information is given in
column 5 to 7.

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 Parameter possible values / Explanation
default value
Robustness [no] Robustness checking of smoothed data
(BETA).
Verbose [no] Verbose mode for smooth.

5.4. Relative Plate Motions

This dialog allows you to plot trajectories of relative plate motions in the map. You
can choose between various plates (but of course not all possible pairs are included). If
your pair is not in the list, you will have to include the relevant information in the file
Scripts2.4/RotationPoles.info. The relevant information for that is the rotation
pole and the angular velocity and a pair number. Then you can use this number in the
dialog.

5.5. Other Data

As an option, you can also plot point data (like measurement locations), names data
(cities), text data (any text you like) and polygon data (faults).

The formats are as follows:

• Point data must be in the format:

one line header, data: longitude latitude [symbol size]
If the symbol size is in the third column just enter the symbol type. A list of GMT
symbol types is available by $ man psxy.

• Names data format:

one line header, data: longitude latitude label [justify]

• Text data format:

one line header, data: longitude latitude size angle font no justify text
This is equivalent to the file format expected from pstext (see: $ man pstext).

• Polygon data format:

one line header, data: longitude latitude; separate multiple segments with “>”
Without doubt this is the most useful feature here as it allows you to plot faults
and other interesting geological information.

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5.6. CMT Solutions

This menu item allows you to plot CMT (Centroid Moment Tensor) solutions. Note
that the file format must be in Harvard CMT solution format for psmeca:
lon lat depth mrr mtt mpp mrt mrp mtp iexp name

You can obtain such solutions at: http://www.seismology.harvard.edu/CMTsearch.html

.

These solutions also allow non-double-couple components. If these are strong, you will
probably not recognize the beach ball appearance. Note that the number of header lines
should be correct or at least not small otherwise GMT will complain.

References
[Bir03] P. Bird. An updated digital model for plate boundaries. Geochem. Geophys.
Geosyst., 4(3):1027, doi:10.1029/2001GC000252, 2003.

[SMH+ 03] B. Sperner, B. Müller, O. Heidbach, D. Delvaux, J. Reinecker, and K. Fuchs.

Tectonic stress in the Earth’s crust: advances in the World Stress Map
project. In: D.A. Nieuwland (Editor), New insights in structural interpre-
tation and modelling. Special Publication Series, Geological Society, London,
212:101–116, 2003.

[Weh98] Veronika Wehrle. Analytische Untersuchung intralithosphärischer De-

formationen und Numerische Methoden zur Bestimmung krustaler
Spannungsdomänen. Dissertation, Fakultät für Physik der Univer-
sität Karlsruhe (TH), 1998. available online: http://www.ubka.uni-
karlsruhe.de/vvv/1998/physik/3/.

[WS91] P. Wessel and W. H. F. Smith. Free software helps map and display data.
EOS Trans. Amer. Geophys. U., 72 (41):441, 445–446, 1991.

[Zob92] M. L. Zoback. First- and second-order patterns of stress in the litho-

sphere: The World Stress Map Project. Journal of Geophysical Research,
97(B8):11703–11728, 1992.

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A. Possible Plate Boundary Event (PBE) assignment

Plate boundaries are characterized by faults with preferred orientations and presumably
include major faults with a low coefficient of friction which can be easily reactivated.
Thus, the derivation of stress orientations from a single focal mechanism is not always
an unambiguous matter, because of its dependence on the mechanical behaviour of the
involved fault zone. In the case of weak faults the angle between the principal stress
axes and the P-B-T axes is theoretically as large as 90◦ (McKenzie, 1969). The scientific
debate about the strength of plate boundary faults – whether they are weak or strong – is
ongoing (e.g. Provost and Houston, 2004). Users should be aware that stress orientations
derived from single focal mechanism solutions (FMS) along weak plate boundaries might
have a higher degree of uncertainty. Thus, FMS data records that are located near plate
boundaries have been flagged as Possible Plate Boundary Events (PBE) if they fulfill
the following criteria:

1. The event is located within a critical horizontal distance relative to the closest plate
boundary segment. The critical distances depend on the types of plate boundaries.
We estimated them by means of statistical analysis as being 45 km for continental
transform faults, 80 km for oceanic transform faults, 70 km for oceanic spreading
ridges, and 200 km for subduction zones. A detailed description of this statistical
analysis is part of a manuscript that has been submitted to the Tectonophysics
Special Issue on Frontiers of Stress Research (Heidbach et al., in review, to be
published in early 2009).

2. The angle between the strike of the nodal plane and the strike of the plate boundary
is smaller than 30◦ .

3. The tectonic regime of the FMS reflects the plate boundary kinematics, i.e. thrust
faulting (TF, TS) near subduction zones, strike-slip faulting (SS, NS, TS) near
oceanic and continental transforms, and normal faulting (NF, NS) near oceanic
spreading ridges.

Stress data records that are flagged as PBEs are not down-ranked in quality, but keep
their C-quality in the WSM database. By default they are not plotted on stress maps
created with CASMO (Heidbach et al., 2004) or CASMI (Heidbach & Höhne, 2008;
Heidbach et al., 2008). For each data record additional information is available in the
database which helps the user to evaluate the influence of plate boundary kinematics
on the stress orientation at a specific location (distance from and type of the plate
boundary). Please contact the WSM team if you have any questions or comments.

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References

Heidbach, O., Barth, A., Hergert, T., Müller, B., Reinecker, J., Tingay, M., Wenzel,
F., (in review). Contemporary stress field of the Earth’s crust: Achievements of the
World Stress Map project. Tectonophysics,
Heidbach, O., Barth, A., Connolly, P., Fuchs, F., Müller, B., Reinecker, J., Sperner, B.,
Tingay, M., Wenzel, F., (2004). Stress Maps in a Minute: The 2004 World Stress
Map Release. Eos Trans. 85(49), 521–529.
Heidbach, O., Höhne, J., (2008). CASMI – a tool for the visualization of the
World Stress Map data base. Computers and Geosciences 34(7), 783– 791,
doi:1016/j.cageo.2007.06.004.
Heidbach, O., Kurfeß, D., Höhne, J. (2008). CASMI – An interactive software tool
for stress map plotting using the 2008 release of the World Stress Map data base
(available online at www.world-stress-map.org).
McKenzie, D., (1969). The relation between fault plane solutions for earthquakes and
the directions of the principal stresses. Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. 59(2), 591–601.
Provost, A.-S., Houston, H., (2003). Stress orientations in northern and central Cali-
fornia: Evidence of the evolution of frictional strength along the San Andreas plate
boundary system. J. Geophys. Res. 108(B3), 2175, doi:10.1029/2001JB001123.

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