skip to main content


Title: Stress change before and after the 2011 M9 Tohoku-oki earthquake
Megathrust systems hold important clues for our understanding of long- and short-term plate boundary dynamics, and the 2011 M9 Tohoku-oki earthquake provides a data-rich case in point. Here, we show that the F-net moment tensor catalog indicates systematic changes in crustal stress in the years leading up to the M9, due to the co-seismic effect, and for the last few years due to viscous relaxation. We explore the match between imaged stress change and the perturbations that are expected from 3-D, mechanical models of the visco-elastic relaxation and afterslip effects of the M9. While these models were constructed based on geodetic and structural seismology constraints alone, they match many characteristics of the seismicity-inferred stress change. This provides additional confidence in the modeling approach, and new clues for our understanding of plate boundary dynamics for the Japan trench. The success of deterministic approaches for exploring crustal stress change also implies that joint inversions using stress from focal mechanisms and geodetic constraints may be feasible. Such future efforts should provide key insights into time-dependent seismic hazard including earthquake triggering scenarios.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1722650
NSF-PAR ID:
10104323
Author(s) / Creator(s):
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Earth and planetary science letters
Volume:
504
ISSN:
0012-821X
Page Range / eLocation ID:
174-184
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. null (Ed.)
    Recent GPS studies show that the Indo-Burma subduction system is locked with the implication of a potential large-magnitude earthquake. To inform better seismic hazard models in the region, we need an improved understanding of the crustal structure and the dynamics of the Indo-Burma subduction system. The Bangladesh-India-Myanmar (BIMA) tripartite project deployed 60 broadband seismometers across the subduction system and have been continuously recording data for ~2 years. In this study, we computed receiver functions from 30 high-quality earthquakes (M≥5.9) with epicentral distances between 30º and 90º recorded by the array. The algorithm utilized ensures the uniqueness of the seismic model and provides an uncertainty estimate of every converted wave amplitude. We stacked all the receiver functions produced at each station along the entire transect to generate a cross-sectional model of the average crustal structure. The level of detail in the image is improved by computing higher frequency receiver functions up to 4 Hz. The results represent some of the strongest constraints on crustal structure across the subduction system. Beneath the Neogene accretionary prism's outer belt, we observe a primary conversion associated with the Ganges Brahmaputra Delta that ranges in depth from ~10 km near the deformation front up to ~12 km at the eastern boundary. From the eastern end of the Neogene accretionary prism to the Sagaing Fault, we image the Indian subducting slab and the Central Myanmar basin. The depth-extent of seismicity associated with the Wadati-Benioff zone is consistent with the locations of primary conversions from the subducting plate. We further verify the converted phases of the slab by analyzing azimuthal moveout variations. The Central Myanmar basin is roughly bowl-shaped in cross-section with a maximum thickness of ~15 km about halfway between the Kabaw and Sagaing faults. The average crustal thickness beneath the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta is ~20 km, most likely representing a transitional crust formed from thinning of the continental crust intruded and underplated by igneous rocks. In contrast, the average thickness of the continental crust beneath the Central Myanmar basin is ~40 km. Our results provide a baseline model for future geophysical investigations of the Indo-Burma subduction zone. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract

    The Shumagin seismic gap along the Alaska Peninsula experienced a major,MW7.8, interplate thrust earthquake on 22 July 2020. Several available finite‐fault inversions indicate patchy slip of up to 4 m at 8–48 km depth. There are differences among the models in peak slip and absolute placement of slip on the plate boundary, resulting from differences in data distributions, model parameterizations, and inversion algorithms. Two representative slip models obtained from inversions of large seismic and geodetic data sets produce very different tsunami predictions at tide gauges and deep‐water pressure sensors (DART stations), despite having only secondary differences in slip distribution. This is found to be the result of the acute sensitivity of the tsunami excitation for rupture below the continental shelf in proximity to an abrupt shelf break. Iteratively perturbing seismic and geodetic inversions by constraining fault model extent along dip and strike, we obtain an optimal rupture model compatible with teleseismicPandSHwaves, regional three‐component broadband and strong‐motion seismic recordings, hr‐GNSS time series and static offsets, as well as tsunami recordings at DART stations and regional and remote tide gauges. Slip is tightly bounded between 25 and 40 km depth, the up‐dip limit of slip in the earthquake is resolved to be well‐inland of the shelf break, and the rupture extent along strike is well‐constrained. The coseismic slip increased Coulomb stress on the shallow plate boundary extending to the trench, but the frictional behavior of the megathrust below the continental slope remains uncertain.

     
    more » « less
  3. Abstract

    The rheology of the crust and mantle and the interaction of viscoelastic flow with seismic/aseismic slip on faults control the state of stress in the lithosphere over multiple seismic cycles. The rheological behavior of rocks is well constrained in a laboratory setting, but thein situproperties of the lithosphere and its lateral variations remain poorly known. Here, we access the lower‐crustal rheology in Southern California by exploiting 8 years of geodetic postseismic deformation following the 2010 El Mayor‐Cucapah earthquake. The data illuminate viscoelastic flow in the lower crust with lateral variations of effective viscosity correlated with the geological province. We show that a Burgers assembly with dashpots following a nonlinear constitutive law can approximate the temporal evolution of stress and strain rate, indicating the activation of nonlinear transient creep before steady‐state dislocation creep. The transient and background viscosities in the lower crust of the Salton Trough are on the order of ~1018and ~1019 Pa s, respectively, about an order of magnitude lower than those in the surrounding regions. We highlight the importance of transient creep, nonlinear flow laws, and lateral variations of rheological properties to capture the entire history of postseismic relaxation following the El Mayor‐Cucapah earthquake.

     
    more » « less
  4. SUMMARY

    Analysis of tectonic and earthquake-cycle associated deformation of the crust can provide valuable insights into the underlying deformation processes including fault slip. How those processes are expressed at the surface depends on the lateral and depth variations of rock properties. The effect of such variations is often tested by forward models based on a priori geological or geophysical information. Here, we first develop a novel technique based on an open-source finite-element computational framework to invert geodetic constraints directly for heterogeneous media properties. We focus on the elastic, coseismic problem and seek to constrain variations in shear modulus and Poisson’s ratio, proxies for the effects of lithology and/or temperature and porous flow, respectively. The corresponding nonlinear inversion is implemented using adjoint-based optimization that efficiently reduces the cost function that includes the misfit between the calculated and observed displacements and a penalty term. We then extend our theoretical and numerical framework to simultaneously infer both heterogeneous Earth’s structure and fault slip from surface deformation. Based on a range of 2-D synthetic cases, we find that both model parameters can be satisfactorily estimated for the megathrust setting-inspired test problems considered. Within limits, this is the case even in the presence of noise and if the fault geometry is not perfectly known. Our method lays the foundation for a future reassessment of the information contained in increasingly data-rich settings, for example, geodetic GNSS constraints for large earthquakes such as the 2011 Tohoku-oki M9 event, or distributed deformation along plate boundaries as constrained from InSAR.

     
    more » « less
  5. SUMMARY Physics-based simulations provide a path to overcome the lack of observational data hampering a holistic understanding of earthquake faulting and crustal deformation across the vastly varying space–time scales governing the seismic cycle. However, simulations of sequences of earthquakes and aseismic slip (SEAS) including the complex geometries and heterogeneities of the subsurface are challenging. We present a symmetric interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin (SIPG) method to perform SEAS simulations accounting for the aforementioned challenges. Due to the discontinuous nature of the approximation, the spatial discretization natively provides a means to impose boundary and interface conditions. The method accommodates 2-D and 3-D domains, is of arbitrary order, handles subelement variations in material properties and supports isoparametric elements, that is, high-order representations of the exterior boundaries, interior material interfaces and embedded faults. We provide an open-source reference implementation, Tandem, that utilizes highly efficient kernels for evaluating the SIPG linear and bilinear forms, is inherently parallel and well suited to perform high-resolution simulations on large-scale distributed memory architectures. Additional flexibility and efficiency is provided by optionally defining the displacement evaluation via a discrete Green’s function approach, exploiting advantages of both the boundary integral and volumetric methods. The optional discrete Green’s functions are evaluated once in a pre-computation stage using algorithmically optimal and scalable sparse parallel solvers and pre-conditioners. We illustrate the characteristics of the SIPG formulation via an extensive suite of verification problems (analytic, manufactured and code comparison) for elastostatic and quasi-dynamic problems. Our verification suite demonstrates that high-order convergence of the discrete solution can be achieved in space and time and highlights the benefits of using a high-order representation of the displacement, material properties and geometries. We apply Tandem to realistic demonstration models consisting of a 2-D SEAS multifault scenario on a shallowly dipping normal fault with four curved splay faults, and a 3-D intersecting multifault scenario of elastostatic instantaneous displacement of the 2019 Ridgecrest, CA, earthquake sequence. We exploit the curvilinear geometry representation in both application examples and elucidate the importance of accurate stress (or displacement gradient) representation on-fault. This study entails several methodological novelties. We derive a sharp bound on the smallest value of the SIPG penalty ensuring stability for isotropic, elastic materials; define a new flux to incorporate embedded faults in a standard SIPG scheme; employ a hybrid multilevel pre-conditioner for the discrete elasticity problem; and demonstrate that curvilinear elements are specifically beneficial for volumetric SEAS simulations. We show that our method can be applied for solving interesting geophysical problems using massively parallel computing. Finally, this is the first time a discontinuous Galerkin method is published for the numerical simulations of SEAS, opening new avenues to pursue extreme scale 3-D SEAS simulations in the future. 
    more » « less