CONSTITUTIVE BEHAVIOR OF GRANITIC ROCK AT THE BRITTLE-DUCTILE TRANSITION Josie Nevitt, David Pollard, and Jessica Warren Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 e-mail:
[email protected] fracture to ductile flow with increasing depth in the Abstract earth’s crust. This so-called “brittle-ductile transition” has important implications for a variety of geological Although significant geological and geophysical and geophysical phenomena, including the mechanics processes, including earthquake nucleation and of earthquake rupture nucleation and propagation propagation, occur in the brittle-ductile transition, (Hobbs et al., 1986; Li and Rice, 1987; Scholz, 1988; earth scientists struggle to identify appropriate Tse and Rice, 1986). Despite the importance of constitutive laws for brittle-ductile deformation. This deformation within this lithospheric interval, significant paper investigates outcrops from the Bear Creek field gaps exist in our ability to accurately characterize area that record deformation at approximately 4-15 km brittle-ductile deformation. Such gaps are strongly depth and 400-500ºC. We focus on the Seven Gables related to the uncertainty in choosing the constitutive outcrop, which contains a ~10cm thick aplite dike that law(s) that govern(s) the rheology of the brittle-ductile is displaced ~45 cm through a contractional step transition. between two sub-parallel left-lateral faults. Stretching Rheology describes the response of a material to an and rotation of the aplite dike, in addition to local applied force and is defined through a set of foliation development in the granodiorite, provides an constitutive equations. In addition to continuum excellent measure of the strain within the step.