Köhler S, Köhn D (2026)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2026
Book Volume: 16
Article Number: 232
Journal Issue: 6
DOI: 10.3390/geosciences16060232
Quantitative stylolite roughness inversion technique (SRIT) is a powerful tool that is increasingly used to determine burial depth and tectonic stress of rocks that contain stylolites. Despite the increasing use of SRIT, there is still a need to validate the accuracy of the method. The presented work aims to evaluate three fundamental questions: (i) Do we need to correct the calculated stress magnitude if the stress field is tilted? (ii) What is the variability of results as a function of sample length, and (iii) how representative are samples for one outcrop? In order to answer these questions, we derive a corrected formula for tectonic stylolite stress inversion that includes tilted principal stresses, we apply the inversion method across multiple scales on single and variable stylolite samples and we evaluate the stress for multiple samples from one outcrop. Our results show that angle correction is needed for strongly tilted samples (to reduce a potential error of up to 50%), that one single stylolite inversion is not representative no matter what the scale, that the inversion accuracy decreases with scale but can be optimized with mean values (down to a length of 20× crossover length) and that at least the orientation of stresses is very consistent within an outcrop.
APA:
Köhler, S., & Köhn, D. (2026). Tectonic Stylolite Stress Inversion, Angle Correction, Validation Across Scales and Variability Within Outcrops. Geosciences, 16(6). https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences16060232
MLA:
Köhler, Saskia, and Daniel Köhn. "Tectonic Stylolite Stress Inversion, Angle Correction, Validation Across Scales and Variability Within Outcrops." Geosciences 16.6 (2026).
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