Seismogenic potential of the Main Himalayan Thrust constrained by coupling segmentation and earthquake scaling

<p>Recent studies have shown that the Himalayan region is under the threat of earthquakes of magnitude 9 or larger. These estimates are based on comparisons of the geodetically inferred moment deficit rate with the seismicity of the region. However, these studies do not account for the physics of fault slip, specifically the influence of frictional barriers on earthquake rupture dynamics, which controls the extent and therefore the magnitude of large earthquakes. Here, we propose a methodology for incorporating outcomes of physics-based earthquake cycle models into hazard estimates. The methodology takes also into account the moment deficit rate, the magnitude-frequency of the current and historical catalogs, and the moment-area earthquake scaling law.</p><p>For the Himalaya setting, we estimate an improved probabilistic estimate moment deficit rate using coupling estimates inferred using a Bayesian framework. The locking distribution of the fault suggests an along-strike segmentation of the MHT with three segments that may act as aseismic barriers. The effect of the barriers on rupture propagation is assessed using results from dynamic models of the earthquake cycle. We show that, accounting for measurement and methodological uncertainties, the MHT is prone to rupturing in M8.7 earthquakes every T>200 yr, with M>9.5 events being greatly improbable. The methodology also allows to estimate the probability of the position of earthquakes on the fault based on the effect of the seismic barriers and their magnitude. This study provides a straightforward and computationally efficient method for estimating regional seismic hazard accounting for the full physics of fault slip.</p>

An Assessment of Earthquake Scaling Relationships for Crustal Earthquakes in Indonesia

To estimate the hazard posed by active faults, estimates of the maximum magnitude earthquake that could occur on the fault are needed. I compare previously published scaling relationships between earthquake magnitude and rupture length with data from recent earthquakes in Indonesia. I compile a total amount of 13 literatures on investigating coseismic deformation in Indonesia, which then divided into strike-slip and dip-slip earthquake cases. I demonstrate that a different scaling relationship generates different misfit compared to data. For a practical practice of making seismic hazard model in Indonesia, this research shows the suggested reference for a scaling relationship of strike-slip and dip-slip faulting regime. On a practical approach in constructing a logic tree for seismic hazard model, using different weighting between each published earthquake scaling relationship is recommended.

A systems-based approach to parameterise seismic hazard in regions with little historical or instrumental seismicity: The South Malawi Active Fault Database

Seismic hazard is frequently characterised using instrumental seismic records. However, in regions where the instrumental record is short relative to earthquake repeat times, extrapolating it to estimate seismic hazard can misrepresent the probable location, magnitude, and frequency of future large earthquakes. Although paleoseismology can address this challenge, this approach requires certain geomorphic settings and carries large inherent uncertainties. Here, we outline how fault slip rates and recurrence intervals can be estimated through an approach that combines fault geometry, earthquake-scaling relationships, geodetically derived regional strain rates, and geological constraints of regional strain distribution. We then apply this approach to the southern Malawi Rift where, although no on-fault slip rate measurements exist, there are theoretical and observational constraints on how strain is distributed between border and intrabasinal faults. This has led to the development of the South Malawi Active Fault Database (SMAFD), the first database of its kind in the East African Rift System (EARS) and designed so that the outputs can be easily incorporated into Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis. We estimate earthquake magnitudes of MW 5.4–7.2 for individual fault sections in the SMAFD, and MW 6.0–7.8 for whole fault ruptures. These potentially high magnitudes for continental normal faults reflect southern Malawi's 11–140 km long faults and thick (30–35 km) seismogenic crust. However, low slip rates (intermediate estimates 0.05–0.8 mm/yr) imply long recurrence intervals between events: 102–105 years for border faults and 103–106 years for intrabasinal faults. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the large range of these estimates can be reduced most significantly from an improved understanding of the rate and partitioning of rift-extension in southern Malawi, earthquake scaling relationships, and earthquake rupture scenarios. Hence these are critical areas for future research. The SMAFD provides a framework for using geological and geodetic information to characterize seismic hazard in low strain rate settings with few on-fault slip rate measurements, and could be adapted for use elsewhere in the EARS or globally.

Daily measurement of slow slip from low-frequency earthquakes is consistent with ordinary earthquake scaling

Slow slip transients on faults can last from seconds to months and stitch together the earthquake cycle. However, no single geophysical instrument is able to observe the full range of slow slip because of bandwidth limitations. Here, we connect seismic and geodetic data from the Mexican subduction zone to explore an instrumental blind spot. We establish a calibration of the daily median amplitude of the seismically recorded low-frequency earthquakes to the daily geodetically recorded moment rate of previously established slow slip events. This calibration allows us to use the precise evolution of low-frequency earthquake activity to quantitatively measure the moment of smaller, subdaily slip events that are unresolvable by geodesy alone. The resulting inferred slow slip moments scale with duration and inter-event time like ordinary earthquakes. These new quantifications help connect slow and fast events in a broad spectrum of transient slip and suggest that slow slip events behave much like ordinary earthquakes.

Earthquake‐Scaling Relationships from Geodetically Derived Slip Distributions

Empirical earthquake scaling relationships describe expected relationships between moment magnitude and various spatial descriptors of the earthquake rupture (along‐strike length, down‐dip width, rupture area, and peak and mean slip). These scaling relationships play important roles in many seismological, geological, and hazards‐assessment applications. Historically, scaling relationships were defined from various seismological criteria, such as teleseismic finite‐fault models or aftershock distributions. The proliferation of earthquake slip distributions from geodetic observations presents an opportunity to reassess earthquake scaling relationships using observations that more directly sample the spatial characteristics of an earthquake than seismological observations. Here, we present a database of 111 earthquake slip distributions from 73 different earthquakes that were derived from geodetic observations. The earthquakes range in magnitude from Mw 5.3 to 9.1. We extract common spatial descriptors from these slip distributions in four different ways to account for biases introduced by inversion regularization, and we regress these spatial descriptors with moment magnitude to derive new empirical scaling relationships. We additionally assess the shape characteristics of the slip distributions and report the average earthquake shape. We find that our scaling relationships differ in important ways from previous studies, and we show that these differences originate from our use of a geodetic slip‐distribution database rather than from methods for extracting spatial descriptors. Notably, we find that geodetic slip distributions systematically predict smaller fault areas than seismically derived scaling relationships. Because geodetic source inversions are likely contaminated to some degree by aseismic afterslip, this relationship suggests that seismologically determined scaling relationships systematically overpredict earthquake dimensions. We find that fault length, fault width, peak slip, and mean slip differ from previous studies in ways that are more complex and magnitude dependent. Given the high‐model resolution afforded by geodetic observations, our earthquake scaling relationships derived from geodetic slip distributions provide improved constraints on empirical scaling relationships.

Tsallis Entropy Index q and the Complexity Measure of Seismicity in Natural Time under Time Reversal before the M9 Tohoku Earthquake in 2011

The observed earthquake scaling laws indicate the existence of phenomena closely associated with the proximity of the system to a critical point. Taking this view that earthquakes are critical phenomena (dynamic phase transitions), here we investigate whether in this case the Lifshitz–Slyozov–Wagner (LSW) theory for phase transitions showing that the characteristic size of the minority phase droplets grows with time as t 1 / 3 is applicable. To achieve this goal, we analyzed the Japanese seismic data in a new time domain termed natural time and find that an LSW behavior is actually obeyed by a precursory change of seismicity and in particular by the fluctuations of the entropy change of seismicity under time reversal before the Tohoku earthquake of magnitude 9.0 that occurred on 11 March 2011 in Japan. Furthermore, the Tsallis entropic index q is found to exhibit a precursory increase.