Masaki Yoshida

The intraplate stresses of the Earth's oceanic plates, which can be measured by geophysical and geological approaches (i.e., focal mechanisms, borehole breakouts, in situ stress measurements, fault slip analysis, volcanic vent alignments, etc.) is crucial for understanding the origin of the intraplate stress field of plate motion. The Pacific plate, which is the largest oceanic plate on Earth, has implications for achieving a general understanding of the intraplate stress. However, because there are a few large seismicities and thus few observational datasets for the stable part of the Pacific plate far from the spreading ridges and trenches, it remains difficult to infer the intraplate stress field from observation data alone. Here, based on a recent publication, I report the numerical studies on the stress state of the entire Pacific plate using an instantaneous global mantle flow calculation technique.