An official website of the United States government
Abstract Earthquake clustering can be promoted by local, regional, and remote triggering. The interaction between faults by static and dynamic stress transfer has received much attention. However, the role of quasi‐static stress interaction mediated by viscoelastic flow is still poorly understood. Here, we investigate whether the tight synchronization of moment‐magnitude 6 earthquakes every about 6 years on distant asperities in the Gofar‐Discovery fault system of the East Pacific Rise may be caused by mechanical coupling within the lithosphere‐asthenosphere system. We build a three‐dimensional numerical model of seismic cycles in the framework of rate‐ and state‐dependent friction with a brittle layer overlaying a viscoelastic mantle with nonlinear rheology to simulate earthquake cycles on separate asperities. The brittle section of the West Gofar fault consists of two frictionally unstable 20 km‐long by 5 km‐wide asperities separated by a velocity‐strengthening barrier, consistent with seismic observations, allowing stress transfer by afterslip and viscoelastic relaxation. We find that viscoelastic stress transfer can promote the synchronization of earthquakes. Even if the asperities are separated by as far as 30 km, synchronization is still possible for a viscosity of the underlying mantle of 1017 Pa s, which can be attained by dislocation creep or transient creep during the postseismic period. Considering the similarities in tectonic and structural settings, viscoelastic stress transfer and earthquake synchronization may also occur at 15’20 (Mid‐Atlantic Ridge), George V (Southeast Indian Ridge), Menard and Heezen transform fault (Pacific‐Antarctic Ridge).
more »
« less
Synchronization of Earthquake Cycles of Adjacent Segments on Oceanic Transform Faults Revealed by Numerical Simulation in the Framework of Rate‐and‐State Friction
Abstract Synchronization behavior of large earthquakes (rupture of nearby faults close in time for many cycles) has been reported in many fault systems. The general idea is that the faults in the system have similar repeating intervals and are positively coupled through stress interaction. However, many details of such synchronization remain unknown. Here, we built a numerical model in the framework of rate‐and‐state friction to simulate earthquake cycles on the west Gofar fault, East Pacific Rise. Our model consists of two seismic patches separated by a barrier patch, which are constrained by seismic observations. We varied the parameters in the barrier to understand its role on earthquake synchronization. First, we found that when the barrier is relatively weak, synchronization can be achieved by afterslip or post‐seismic creep in the barrier patch. Second, static stress transfer can lead to synchronization, opposite to the suggestion by Scholz (2010,https://doi.org/10.1785/0120090309), which was based on results from a spring‐slider model using rate‐and‐state friction. Third, the width of the barrier is more important than its strength. When the barrier is narrow enough (no more than half the width of the seismic patch in our model), the system can achieve synchronization even with a very strong barrier. Fourth, for certain simulations, the interaction between the two seismic patches promotes partial rupture in the seismic patches and leads to complex behavior: the system switches from synchronized to unsynchronized over 10–20 cycles.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1654416
- PAR ID:
- 10450669
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth
- Volume:
- 126
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2169-9313
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Elevated seismic noise for moderate‐size earthquakes recorded at teleseismic distances has limited our ability to see their complexity. We develop a machine‐learning‐based algorithm to separate noise and earthquake signals that overlap in frequency. The multi‐task encoder‐decoder model is built around a kernel pre‐trained on local (e.g., short distances) earthquake data (Yin et al., 2022,https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggac290) and is modified by continued learning with high‐quality teleseismic data. We denoise teleseismic P waves of deep Mw5.0+ earthquakes and use the clean P waves to estimate source characteristics with reduced uncertainties of these understudied earthquakes. We find a scaling of moment and duration to beM0 ≃ τ4, and a resulting strong scaling of stress drop and radiated energy with magnitude ( and ). The median radiation efficiency is 5%, a low value compared to crustal earthquakes. Overall, we show that deep earthquakes have weak rupture directivity and few subevents, suggesting a simple model of a circular crack with radial rupture propagation is appropriate. When accounting for their respective scaling with earthquake size, we find no systematic depth variations of duration, stress drop, or radiated energy within the 100–700 km depth range. Our study supports the findings of Poli and Prieto (2016,https://doi.org/10.1002/2016jb013521) with a doubled amount of earthquakes investigated and with earthquakes of lower magnitudes.more » « less
-
Abstract Determining conditions for earthquake slip on faults is a key goal of fault mechanics highly relevant to seismic hazard. Previous studies have demonstrated that enhanced dynamic weakening (EDW) can lead to dynamic rupture of faults with much lower shear stress than required for rupture nucleation. We study the stress conditions before earthquake ruptures of different sizes that spontaneously evolve in numerical simulations of earthquake sequences on rate‐and‐state faults with EDW due to thermal pressurization of pore fluids. We find that average shear stress right before dynamic rupture (aka shear prestress) systematically varies with the rupture size. The smallest ruptures have prestress comparable to the local shear stress required for nucleation. Larger ruptures weaken the fault more, propagate over increasingly under‐stressed areas due to dynamic stress concentration, and result in progressively lower average prestress over the entire rupture. The effect is more significant in fault models with more efficient EDW. We find that, as a result, fault models with more efficient weakening produce fewer small events and result in systematically lower b‐values of the frequency‐magnitude event distributions. The findings (a) illustrate that large earthquakes can occur on faults that appear not to be critically stressed compared to stresses required for slip nucleation; (b) highlight the importance of finite‐fault modeling in relating the local friction behavior determined in the lab to the field scale; and (c) suggest that paucity of small events or seismic quiescence may be the observational indication of mature faults that operate under low shear stress due to EDW.more » « less
-
Abstract Axial Seamount is an active submarine volcano located at the intersection of the Cobb hot spot and the Juan de Fuca Ridge (45°57′N, 130°01′W). Bottom pressure recorders captured co‐eruption subsidence of 2.4–3.2 m in 1998, 2011, and 2015, and campaign‐style pressure surveys every 1–2 years have provided a long‐term time series of inter‐eruption re‐inflation. The 2015 eruption occurred shortly after the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Cabled Array came online providing real‐time seismic and deformation observations for the first time. Nooner and Chadwick (2016,https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah4666) used the available vertical deformation data to model the 2015 eruption deformation source as a steeply dipping prolate‐spheroid, approximating a high‐melt zone or conduit beneath the eastern caldera wall. More recently, Levy et al. (2018,https://doi.org/10.1130/G39978.1) used OOI seismic data to estimate dip‐slip motion along a pair of outward‐dipping caldera ring faults. This fault motion complicates the deformation field by contributing up to several centimeters of vertical seafloor motion. In this study, fault‐induced surface deformation was calculated from the slip estimates of Levy et al. (2018,https://doi.org/10.1130/G39978.1) then removed from vertical deformation data prior to model inversions. Removing fault motion resulted in an improved model fit with a new best‐fitting deformation source located 2.11 km S64°W of the source of Nooner and Chadwick (2016,https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah4666) with similar geometry. This result shows that ring fault motion can have a significant impact on surface deformation, and future modeling efforts need to consider the contribution of fault motion when estimating the location and geometry of subsurface magma movement at Axial Seamount.more » « less
-
Abstract Low‐frequency earthquakes are a seismic manifestation of slow fault slip. Their emergent onsets, low amplitudes, and unique frequency characteristics make these events difficult to detect in continuous seismic data. Here, we train a convolutional neural network to detect low‐frequency earthquakes near Parkfield, CA using the catalog of Shelly (2017),https://doi.org/10.1002/2017jb014047as training data. We explore how varying model size and targets influence the performance of the resulting network. Our preferred network has a peak accuracy of 85% and can reliably pick low‐frequency earthquake (LFE) S‐wave arrival times on single station records. We demonstrate the abilities of the network using data from permanent and temporary stations near Parkfield, and show that it detects new LFEs that are not part of the Shelly (2017),https://doi.org/10.1002/2017jb014047catalog. Overall, machine‐learning approaches show great promise for identifying additional low‐frequency earthquake sources. The technique is fast, generalizable, and does not require sources to repeat.more » « less
