Abstract A devastating magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Southern Haiti on 14 August 2021. The earthquake caused severe damage and over 2000 casualties. Resolving the earthquake rupture process can provide critical insights into hazard mitigation. Here we use integrated seismological analyses to obtain the rupture history of the 2021 earthquake. We find the earthquake first broke a blind thrust fault and then jumped to a disconnected strike‐slip fault. Neither of the fault configurations aligns with the left‐lateral tectonic boundary between the Caribbean and North American plates. The complex multi‐fault rupture may result from the oblique plate convergence in the region, so that the initial thrust rupture is due to the boundary‐normal compression and the following strike‐slip faulting originates from the Gonâve microplate block movement, orienting SW‐NE direction. The complex rupture development of the earthquake suggests that the regional deformation is accommodated by a network of segmented faults with diverse faulting conditions.
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Rupture Segmentation of the 14 August 2021 Mw 7.2 Nippes, Haiti, Earthquake Using Aftershock Relocation from a Local Seismic Deployment
ABSTRACT The 14 August 2021 Mw 7.2 Haiti earthquake struck 11 yr after the devastating 2010 event within the Enriquillo Plantain Garden (EPG) fault zone in the Southern peninsula of Haiti. Space geodetic results show that the rupture is composed of both left-lateral strike-slip and thrust motion, similar to the 2010 rupture; but aftershock locations from a local short-period network are too diffuse to precisely delineate the segments that participated in this rupture. A few days after the mainshocks, we installed 12 broadband stations in the epicentral area. Here, we use data from those stations in combination with four local Raspberry Shakes stations that were already in place as part of a citizen seismology experiment to precisely relocate 2528 aftershocks from August to December 2021, and derive 1D P- and S-crustal velocity models for this region. We show that the aftershocks delineate three north-dipping structures with different strikes, located to the north of the EPG fault. In addition, two smaller aftershock clusters occurred on the EPG fault near the hypocenter area, indicative of triggered seismicity. Focal mechanisms are in agreement with coseismic slip inversion from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar data with nodal planes that are consistent with the transpressional structures illustrated by the aftershock zones.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2217976
- PAR ID:
- 10463081
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
- Volume:
- 113
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0037-1106
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 58 to 72
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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