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western quebec and southern ontario - Department of Geology

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2001. All events seemed to occur in the upper part <strong>of</strong> the crust at depths less than 18 km,<strong>and</strong> most events occurred at depths less than 10 km. The epicentres <strong>of</strong> studied events areconcentrated beneath Lake Ontario <strong>and</strong> south <strong>of</strong> Lake Erie <strong>and</strong> exhibit statisticallysignificant clustering <strong>and</strong> a northeast alignment. Dineva et al. (2004) recognized fivedistinct clusters, four around the <strong>western</strong> Lake Ontario-Niagara Falls area <strong>and</strong> one on theOhio-Pennsylvania border near Lake Erie. The inferred spatial correlations betweenmodern seismicity <strong>and</strong> magnetic anomalies <strong>and</strong> the proximity <strong>of</strong> seismicity to the GreatLakes suggested that seismicity in the region tends to be localized mostly in areas wherepre-existing tectonic structures are favourably oriented with respect to the present-daystress field.2.4. Focal Mechanism <strong>and</strong> Tectonic StressEvaluation <strong>of</strong> focal mechanisms for several seismic events in eastern Canadademonstrates a change from a strike-slip regime in the central eastern United States to athrust regime in the southeastern Canada-U.S. border region (e.g. Zoback, 1992b; Du etal., 2003; Baird et al. 2009). The earthquake hypocentres were also shown to be deeperon the Canadian side (5–28 km) versus much shallower depths (2–8 km) on the U.S. side(Du et al., 2003). This transition seems to occur near the former margin <strong>of</strong> the Laurentideice sheet (Stewart et al., 2000). Adams <strong>and</strong> Basham, (1989) thus suggested that theseismicity in this region may be partially a result <strong>of</strong> stress perturbations induced bypostglacial rebound.22

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