Search for: All records

Abstract The Alaska Peninsula section of the Alaska-Aleutian subduction zone shows significant along-strike variations in seismic activity and interseismic plate coupling. This region experienced the 2020 Mw 7.8 Simeonof megathrust, Mw 7.6 Sand Point strike-slip, and 2021 Mw 8.2 Chignik megathrust earthquakes. This study, utilizing deep learning techniques, presents a high-precision earthquake catalog, providing insights into background seismicity, aftershocks, and slab geometry. An abrupt change in the slab dip angle at 30–40 km depths in the Shumagin segment acted as a barrier to the Simeonof and Sand Point earthquake ruptures. The Simeonof event triggered more aftershocks in the overriding plate than the Chignik event, suggesting the overriding plate is more deformed and hydrated in the Shumagin segment. The Sand Point earthquake triggered numerous aftershocks in the overriding plate, delineating a fault in the overriding plate with similar geometry as the intraslab mainshock fault, but activated around seven days after the mainshock. 

Abstract Stress‐based postseismic deformation modeling including afterslip and viscoelastic relaxation usually assumes the coseismic slip distribution and the associated stress perturbation as known. However, that assumption biases the postseismic modeling results by the assumptions that underlie the coseismic models. Importantly, this misses an opportunity to iteratively constrain the coseismic slip model with postseismic observations. We used a broad set of seismic and geodetic data to create multiple coseismic slip models that only differ in the down‐dip extent of the rupture plane and fit the coseismic observations for the July 29, Mw 8.2 Chignik earthquake equally well. We then evaluated the quality of those coseismic slip models based on how well each of them predicts postseismic GNSS displacements using a stress‐driven afterslip model. We find that coseismic slip models that generate afterslip too far down‐dip systematically fail to predict postseismic deformation. We find that the postseismic observations are best predicted by a narrower coseismic slip model that terminates abruptly at its deepest extent. The model predictions improve further if stress‐driven afterslip is combined with a superimposed viscoelastic relaxation response of a 50 km thick elastic lithosphere for the overriding plate and an elastic cold nose to the mantle wedge. 

Two recent earthquakes in Alaska may be part of a long-lived sequence along the megathrust.