This study is about the variation of stresses and movement characteristics of the

westernmost portion of Philippine Sea Plate in relation to Eurasian Plate. The study area
covers region between Luzon island and Taiwan. The study aims to calculate the states of
stress by focal inversion and Global Positioning System on the area.

In this study, I learned: (1) that the Global Positioning System only measure the upper
crustal motion and not the rigid movement of a plate (correcting what I know before that the
GPS represents the movement as a rigid body of a plate), (2) how the inversion method
works (because in other studies, they do not discuss how they did the inversion), (3) the
assumptions of the inversion method (i.e. fault plane slip represents direction of shear stress,
the area has uniform direction of movement, and that earthquakes occur because of
dislocation by shearing), (4) the comparison of results of different methods used previously,
and why results vary at some points, (5) that there is variation in movement in that region
(shown by the authors by dividing the area into six blocks because of large misfit in slip
motion),(6) that crust motion along the north-south trend of Luzon arc increases as you go
south, and (7) that the strike of convergence between Philippine Sea plate and Eurasian Plate
is 299.

Aside from learning, I was also amazed by the figure shown (figure 3 in the study), it
reminds me of our structural geology class. Im glad I could apply what I learned about the
three components of stress, and the interpretation based on their orientation. It is really
motivating to study once you understand what you read because of your background.

Although glad with the study, I still need clarification about some points: (1) why is the
deviation of upper crust movement from lower crust could indicate mountain building
collision? (how was that derived?), and (2) why are those slip vector data that the authors
used represent the convergence in the region? It is not clear to me because in previous
studies that I read, slip data located near Taiwan were discarded because of the complexity of
its tectonics. I just want to know how the authors can say that all of the 251 data used are
representative data for the study.
 In my opinion, the study have met its objectives. I would recommend the study
for those who want to study the convergence of Philippine Sea Plate and Eurasian Plate as
this compares different methods, and explains interpretation the simple way.