Methods for quantitatively determining fault slip using fault separation

Fault slip and fault separation are generally not equal to each other, however, they are geometrically related. The fault slip (S) is a vector with a magnitude, a direction, and a sense of the movement. In this paper, a series of approaches are introduced to estimate quantitatively the magnitude and direction of the fault slip using fault separations. For calculation, the known factors are the pitch of slip lineations (γ), the pitch of a cutoff (β), the dip separation (Smd) or the strike separation (Smh) for one marker. The two main purposes of this work include: (1) to analyze the relationship between fault slip and fault separation when slickenside lineations of a fault are known; (2) to estimate the slip direction when the parameters Smd or Smh, and β for two non-parallel markers at a place (e.g., a point) are known. We tested the approaches using an example from a mainly strike-slip fault in East Quantoxhead, United Kingdom, and another example from the Jordan Field, Ector County, Texas. Also, we estimated the relative errors of apparent heave of the normal faults from the Sierra de San Miguelito, central Mexico.