The World Stress Map – 2016 Release

The latest version of the World Stress Map Project has been officially released this week. This is the 30^th anniversary of the project, and sees a big boost in data over the prior release in 2008. The latest version of the World Stress Map contains 42870 stress data records, which is approximately double that of the prior release, and about 10 times more than the first release over 25 years ago.

The 2016 Release of the World Stress Map

The World Stress Map Project started back in 1986, and was the brainchild of Professor Karl Fuchs and the International Lithosphere Programme, who asked Mary-Lou Zoback to head up a 5-year global effort to map out the state of tectonic stress in the Earth’s lithosphere. The initial results from over 30 researchers were published in an awesome 1992 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research. Karl Fuchs and the WSM deputy leader, Dr Birgit Muller, then managed to get the project continued through the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, with a research team based in Karlsruhe running the project until 2008. This phase of the project culminated in a 2010 special issue of Tectonophysics. Since 2008, the project has been based at the GeoForschungsZentrum in Potsdam, and led by Professor Oliver Heidbach, and is a part of the ICSU World Data System. The project remains a huge global collaborative effort, with contributions from dozens of researchers.

One of the fantastic things about the World Stress Map project is that it is completely free and public. All the data, as well as maps, software and interpretation guidelines are freely and publicly available. It is quite easy to make your own customised stress maps, and you can even download the .kmz file and put the stress map into GoogleEarth!

The 2016 release sees not just a doubling of stress data, but a large increase in petroleum industry data. Since 2003, the WSM has worked hard to put more petroleum industry data in the database, and the latest release sees particularly big increases in data in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Iceland, Texas, Oklahoma, Switzerland, China, Italy and New Zealand. This is on top of the big increases in petroleum data from Southeast Asia, Australia, Germany, Egypt, West Texas and other areas in the 2008 version. The World Stress Map Project now contains over 7100 data points from wells. I am particularly proud of my recently completed PhD student, Dr Mojtaba Rajabi, for his amazing contribution in this big increase in data.

As ever though, there are still numerous conspicuous gaps in the World Stress Map. There is currently no to little data in the WSM from places such as the Middle East, Russia, Northern Africa and Brazil – all countries with large petroleum industries, but where data has not been made publicly available.

If you are interested in contributing to the World Stress Map Project, or would like the WSM t undertake stress analysis research on data you may have, please get in touch with the WSM or I!