STEEP is a multidisciplinary project focused on understanding how or if glacial processes are linked to tectonics. The basic working hypothesis is founded fundamentally on the modern concept that most tectonic systems are always near a general state of failure on all active slip systems (faults and/or ductile flow systems). If you accept this premise seemly small things can have a major impact. In particular, the "small thing" here is the agent of glacial erosion. The basic question is do glaciers in active tectonic regions occur where they do because the faults are there to promote erosion or are the faults where they are because the glaciers aid the process of erosion to focus the deformation on that particular fault system. Click here to go to the main project web site hosted by the University of Texas.
My involvement in this project is as a seismologist. In collaboration with the University of Alaska we installed a 24 station seismic network in the remote area of southeastern Alaska in the summers of 2005 and 2006. The map below shows the seismic stations we installed as blue dots (summer 2005) and red dots (2006). The green triangles are existing short-period statiosn of the Alaska network. Events located in this region since the deployment of the STEEP stations are shown as stars. Seismicity prior to 2005 is also plotted for reference as black crosses.
