the 2006 2007 kuril islands great earthquake sequence the southwestern half of a 500 km long seismic gap in the central kuril island arc subduction zone experienced two great earthquakes with extensive preshock and aftershock sequences in late 2006 to early 2007 the nature of seismic coupling in the gap had been uncertain due to the limited historical record of prior large events and the presence of distinctive upper plate trench and outer rise structures relative to adjacent regions along the arc that have experienced repeated great interplate earthquakes in the last few centuries the intraplate region seaward of the seismic gap had several shallow compressional events during the preceding decades notably an m s 7 2 event on 16 march 1963 leading to speculation that the interplate fault was seismically coupled this issue was partly resolved by failure of the shallow portion of the interplate megathrust in an m w 8 3 thrust event on 15 november 2006 this event ruptured 250 km along the seismic gap just northeast of the great 1963 kuril island m w 8 5 earthquake rupture zone within minutes of the thrust event intense earthquake activity commenced beneath the outer wall of the trench seaward of the interplate rupture with the larger events having normal faulting mechanisms an unusual double band of interplate and intraplate aftershocks developed on 13 january 2007 an m w 8 1 extensional earthquake ruptured within the pacific plate beneath the seaward edge of the kuril trench this event is the third largest normal faulting earthquake seaward of a subduction zone on record and its rupture zone extended to at least 33 km depth and paralleled most of the length of the 2006 rupture the 13 january 2007 event produced stronger shaking in japan than the larger thrust event as a consequence of higher short period energy radiation from the source the great event aftershock sequences were dominated by the expected faulting geometries thrust faulting for the 2006 rupture zone and normal faulting for the 2007 rupture zone a large intraplate compressional event occurred on 15 january 2009 m w 7 4 near 45 km depth below the rupture zone of the 2007 event and in the vicinity of the 16 march 1963 compressional event the fault geometry rupture process and slip distributions of the two great events are estimated using very broadband teleseismic body and surface wave observations the occurrence of the thrust event in the shallowest portion of the interplate fault in a region with a paucity of large thrust events at greater depths suggests that the event removed most of the slip deficit on this portion of the interplate fault this great earthquake doublet demonstrates the heightened seismic hazard posed by induced intraplate faulting following large interplate thrust events future seismic failure of the remainder of the seismic gap appears viable with the northeastern region that has also experienced compressional activity seaward of the megathrust warranting particular attention

source model of the 2007 mw 8 0 pisco peru earthquake implications for seismogenic behavior of subduction megathrusts we use interferometric synthetic aperture radar teleseismic body waves tsunami waveforms recorded by tsunameters field observations of coastal uplift subsidence and runup to develop and test a refined model of the spatiotemporal history of slip during the mw 8 0 pisco earthquake of 15 august 2007 our preferred solution shows two distinct patches of high slip one patch is located near the epicenter while another larger patch ruptured 60 km further south at the latitude of the paracas peninsula slip on the second patch started 60 s after slip initiated on the first patch we observed a remarkable anticorrelation between the coseismic slip distribution and the aftershock distribution determined from the peruvian seismic network the proposed source model is compatible with regional runup measurements and open ocean tsunami records from the latter data set we identified the 12 min timing error of the tsunami forecast system as being due to a mislocation of the source caused by the use of only one tsunameter located in a nonoptimal azimuth the comparison of our source model with the tsunami observations validate that the rupture did not extend to the trench and confirms that the pisco event is not a tsunami earthquake despite its low apparent rupture velocity 1 5 km s we favor the interpretation that the earthquake consists of two subevents each with a conventional rupture velocity 2 4 km s the delay between the two subevents might reflect the time for the second shock to nucleate or alternatively the time it took for afterslip to increase the stress level on the second asperity to a level necessary for static triggering the source model predicts uplift offshore and subsidence on land with the pivot line following closely the coastline this pattern is consistent with our observation of very small vertical displacement along the shoreline when we visited the epicentral area in the days following the event this earthquake represents to our knowledge one of the best examples of a link between the geomorphology of the coastline and the pattern of surface deformation induced by large interplate ruptures

damage to coastal villages due to the 1992 flores island earthquake tsunami a field survey of the 1992 flores island earthquake tsunami was conducted during december 29 1992 to january 5 1993 along the north coast of the eastern part of flores island we visited over 40 villages measured tsunami heights and interviewed the inhabitants it was clarified that the first wave attacked the coast within five minutes at most of the surveyed villages the crust was uplifted west of the cape of batumanuk and subsided east of it in the residential area of wuring which is located on a sand spit with ground height of 2 meters most wooden houses built on stilts collapsed and 87 people were killed even though the tsunami height reached only 3 2 meters in the two villages on babi island the tsunami swept away all wooden houses and killed 263 of 1 093 inhabitants tsunami height at riang kroko village on the northeastern end of flores island reached 26 2 meters and 137 of the 406 inhabitants were killed by the tsumani evidence of landslides was detected at a few points on the coast of hading bay and the huge tsunami was probably formed by earthquake induced landslides the relationship between tsunami height and mortality was checked for seven villages the efficiencies of trees arranged in front of coastal villages and coral reefs in dissipating the tsunami energy are discussed

a new spectral ratio method using narrow band coda envelopes evidence for non self similarity in the hector mine sequence 1 the use of local and regional s wave coda is shown to provide stable amplitude ratios that better constrains source differences between event pairs we first compared amplitude ratio performance between local and near regional s and coda waves in the san francisco bay region for moderate sized events then applied the coda spectral ratio method to the 1999 hector mine mainshock and its larger aftershocks we find 1 average amplitude ratio standard deviations using coda are 0 05 to 0 12 roughly a factor of 3 smaller than direct s waves for 0 2 f 15 0 hz 2 coda spectral ratios for the mw 7 0 hector mine earthquake and its aftershocks show a clear departure from self similarity consistent with other studies using the same datasets and 3 event pairs green s function and target events can be separated by 25 km for coda amplitudes without any appreciable degradation in sharp contrast to direct waves

time domain observations of a slow precursor to the 1994 romanche transform earthquake low frequency spectral anomalies have indicated that some large earthquakes are preceded by extended episodes of smooth moment release but the reality of these slow precursors has been debated because they have not been directly observed in the time domain high gain seismograms from the 14 march 1994 romanche transform event moment magnitude m w 7 0 show a precursory ramp with a moment of 7 1018 newton meters beginning about 100 seconds before the arrival of the high frequency p waves this precursor was the initial phase of a slow component of slip that released nearly half of the total moment of the earthquake such behavior may be typical for large earthquakes on the oceanic ridge transform system

using centroid time delays to characterize source durations and identify earthquakes with unique characteristics the relationship between m 0 and the rupture duration is often difficult to establish this is particularly true for large earthquakes for which the moment rate functions mrf generally have complicated shapes and the estimated durations can vary considerably depending on the methodology used to evaluate the mrf in this work we show that the centroid time delay c provides an alternative estimate of the source duration inverted mrfs often end gradually making the end of coseismic rupture difficult to detect in such cases when the rupture duration is not well defined the time delay c is a useful quantity to represent the first order temporal characteristics of the rupture process variations in stress parameter can be investigated by assuming a standard scaling relationship between the seismic moment m0m0 and c this simple scaling relationship can also be used to identify unusual earthquakes with unique source properties such as events involving complicated rupture processes or earthquakes characterized by unusual rupture velocities stress drops or aspect ratios

a very broad band inversion method for the recovery of earthquake source parameters abstract waveform studies of the earthquake source have traditionally been performed in narrow bands of the seismic spectrum waveform matching of p and sh waves emphasizes frequencies near and above the corner frequency normal mode and surface wave analyses on the other hand are performed on data which contain information only below the corner frequency a new method is presented which formally includes the result of a long period centroid moment tensor analysis in an inversion of broad band body wave phases a parametrized source model is used which allows for the recovery of a detailed source time function as well as the direction and magnitude of rupture propagation the technical details and the performance of the method are demonstrated in an analysis of the october 28 1983 borah peak idaho earthquake in particular it is shown how the combination of the long period and broad band data sets in the inversion improves the resolution of both the focal mechanism and the scalar moment the very broad band method is applied in an analysis of the september 19 1985 michoacan m w 8 0 earthquake two concentrations of moment release are identified in the source time function separated by 25 30 s in time the spatial distribution of moment is well explained both by a model of unilateral rupture towards the east with a propagation velocity of 2 4 km s 1 and by two point sources separated by 95 km it is shown that the p wave data are largely insensitive to the scalar moment and that source time functions obtained without consideration of the total moment release exaggerate the heterogeneity of slip on the fault plane source time functions which do contain the total moment show that a large fraction of the moment was released smoothly over the whole duration 80 s of the event the results suggest that the fault plane was characterized by two regions of high stress drop but that a large portion of slip occurred on surrounding weak portions of the plane

the depth dependence of earthquake duration and implications for rupture mechanisms the duration of rupture is a fundamental characteristic of earthquakes and is important for understanding the mechanics of faulting1 2 the complexity of the seismic source and the incoherence of the high frequency seismic wavefield often inhibit the identification location and timing of features in the later part of earthquake rupture here we sum many teleseismic records from regional seismic arrays producing an unusually clear depiction of the earthquake source at short periods by suppressing background noise and coda generated near the receivers the ending as well as the beginning of rupture is clearly identifiable for most earthquakes examined measurements of 130 large earthquakes show that near 100 km depth rupture duration averages 11 s when scaled to a moment of 1026 dyn cm this decreases to 5 5 s at 650 km depth models of faulting suggest that duration should be inversely proportional to the shear wave velocity and the cube root of stress drop thus to explain the observed twofold decrease in duration with depth stress drops would have to increase by a factor of four as shear velocity increases with depth by only about 20 however observed stress drops show no strong trend with depth3 4 suggesting that the faulting process changes with depth

slip history of the 1994 sanriku haruka oki japan earthquake deduced from strong motion data abstract we analyzed the seismic waves of the 1994 sanriku haruka oki earthquake m w 7 7 which occurred in the aftershock area of the 1968 tokachi oki earthquake m w 8 2 applying a multiple time window inversion scheme to near source strong motion data we obtained a detailed spatiotemporal rupture process and compared it with that of the tokachi oki earthquake the fault geometry is constructed based on the aftershock distribution the obtained rupture model is consistent with the cmt solution even for a non double couple component the total seismic moment is 4 0 10 20 n m large slips are concentrated in three asperities the first asperity centers about 40 km south and 50 km west from the hypocenter with a maximum slip of 4 4 m the second one centers about 60 km west from the hypocenter with a maximum slip of 2 2 m and the third one lies about 110 km west from the hypocenter with a maximum slip of 2 6 m the obtained moment rate and the duration on the first and second asperities are lower and much longer than those on the third asperity respectively the first asperity does not overlap with an area of large slip during the tokachi oki earthquake but the second or third seem to overlap with or be adjacent to the asperity of the tokachi oki earthquake our inversion result also shows an abrupt change of the rupture velocity from 1 8 to 3 0 km sec at the central part of the fault plane a difference of the seismic coupling between the oceanic and the continental lithospheres at the trenchward side and at the landward side of the 143 e meridian seems to affect the rupture process of this earthquake

the shikotan earthquake of october 4 1994 lithospheric earthquake a large m w 8 2 earthquake occurred off shikotan is one of the kurile is on october 4 1994 we inverted 32 body wave records to determine the rupture pattern using an iterative deconvolution method the mechanisms of the subevents were allowed to vary during rupture the source parameters obtained are the location of the initial break 43 48 n 147 40 e the centroid depth 56 km strike dip rake 49 75 125 for the total source the seismic moment m o 2 6 10 21 nm m w 8 2 source time duration t 42 s the average rupture velocity 2 5 km s we also determined the mechanism using long period love and rayleigh waves from 14 stations the solution for a finite source distributed over a depth range from 0 to 90 km is strike dip rake 54 76 129 with mo 2 3 10 21 nm in good agreement with that from body waves referring to the extent of the aftershock area and the subevent distribution we estimated the fault area s 120 60 km the average slip d 5 6m and the stress drop 11 mpa we computed synthetic waveforms as well as static displacements using either the steep or the low angle plane as the fault plane and found that the steep dip fault model fits the data better our result the mechanism large centroid depth high stress drop strongly suggests that the 1994 shikotan earthquake is a lithospheric earthquake an intra plate event that ruptures through a substantial part of the subducting oceanic lithosphere this type of lithospheric earthquake is relatively common

the june 2000 mw 7 9 earthquakes south of sumatra deformation in the india australia plate 1 two large mw 7 9 earthquakes occurred on 4 and 18 june 2000 south of sumatra beneath the indian ocean both earthquakes were predominantly left lateral strike slip on vertical n s trending faults that we interpret to be reactivated fracture zones the 4 june enggano earthquake occurred at the edge of the rupture area of the 1833 subduction earthquake the first strike slip subevent within the subducting plate triggered a thrust subevent on the plate interface which comprised at least 35 of the total moment and ruptured se away from the 1833 earthquake the 18 june earthquake in the wharton basin is one of the largest shallow strike slip faulting earthquakes ever recorded a small second subevent with reverse slip is required to fit the body waves the orientation of both subevents in our preferred model is consistent with the current stress field in the region both the june 2000 earthquakes are consistent with recent models of distributed deformation in the india australia composite plate the occurrence of the enggano earthquake implies that the stress field within the indian plate continues to a depth of 50 km in the subducting slab the purely strike slip source model of the wharton basin earthquake obtained by robinson et al 2001 matches the p waves very poorly and fits the s waves no better than our preferred model the strike slip subevents of both earthquakes had few aftershocks and higher stress drops than the subduction thrust subevent of the enggano earthquake this difference is consistent with previous observations of oceanic and subduction earthquakes

the 2010 m w 7 2 el mayor cucapah earthquake sequence baja california mexico and southernmost california usa active seismotectonics along the mexican pacific margin the el mayor cucapah earthquake sequence started with a few foreshocks in march 2010 and a second sequence of 15 foreshocks of m 2 up to m4 4 that occurred during the 24 h preceding the mainshock the foreshocks occurred along a north south trend near the mainshock epicenter the mw 7 2 mainshock on april 4 exhibited complex faulting possibly starting with a m6 normal faulting event followed 15 s later by the main event which included simultaneous normal and right lateral strike slip faulting the aftershock zone extends for 120 km from the south end of the elsinore fault zone north of the us mexico border almost to the northern tip of the gulf of california the waveform relocated aftershocks form two abutting clusters each about 50 km long as well as a 10 km north south aftershock zone just north of the epicenter of the mainshock even though the baja california data are included the magnitude of completeness and the hypocentral errors increase gradually with distance south of the international border the spatial distribution of large aftershocks is asymmetric with five m5 aftershocks located to the south of the mainshock and only one m5 7 aftershock but numerous smaller aftershocks to the north further the northwest aftershock cluster exhibits complex faulting on both northwest and northeast planes thus the aftershocks also express a complex pattern of stress release along strike the overall rate of decay of the aftershocks is similar to the rate of decay of a generic california aftershock sequence in addition some triggered seismicity was recorded along the elsinore and san jacinto faults to the north but significant northward migration of aftershocks has not occurred the synthesis of the el mayor cucapah sequence reveals transtensional regional tectonics including the westward growth of the mexicali valley and the transfer of pacific north america plate motion from the gulf of california in the south into the southernmost san andreas fault system to the north we propose that the location of the 2010 el mayor cucapah as well as the 1992 landers and 1999 hector mine earthquakes may have been controlled by the bends in the plate boundary

the 1996 peru tsunamigenic earthquake broadband source process we investigate the spatio temporal complexity of moment release of the february 21 1996 peru earthquake mw 7 5 we use a non linear source tomographic technique based on simulated annealing to invert surface wave source spectra for the slip distribution on a gently dipping fault plane the spectra 5 65 mhz are obtained using an empirical green s function egf method applied to first and second orbit fundamental mode rayleigh waves spectra are well fit by a 110 km bilateral rupture subparallel to the trench updip of the hypocenter with a total moment of 2 0 1020 nm the non linear inversion reveals a 30 30 km major slip patch south the onset where rupture velocities attain 1 5 2 0 km s inversions of teleseismic broadband p and sh waves 10 500 mhz indicate little or no directivity consistent with the surface wave data the average source time functions for both the surface and body wave data are similar in shape and in duration 50 s part of the slip during the 1996 peru event occurred in a region of reduced background seismicity as was the case for the 1992 nicaragua slow event suggesting that the seismogenic potential of low seismicity regions near the trench should be globally reassessed

multiple cmt source analysis of the 2004 sumatra earthquake while it is agreed that the great sumatra earthquake of december 26 2004 was among the largest earthquakes of the past century there has been disagreement on how large it was which part of the fault ruptured and how the rupture took place we present a centroid moment tensor cmt analysis of the earthquake in which multiple point sources are used in the inversion to mimic a propagating slip pulse the final model consists of five point sources with the southernmost sources accounting for the majority of the moment release the presumed fault planes of the southern sources strike northwest while those in the north strike northeast consistent with the geometry of the subduction trench slip on the fault is found to be more oblique in the north than in the south the inversion with five sources leads to a moment magnitude for the sumatra earthquake of m w 9 3 consistent with estimates from long period normal mode amplitudes

time functions of deep earthquakes from broadband and short period stacks to constrain dynamic source properties of deep earthquakes we have systematically constructed broadband time functions of deep earthquakes by stacking and scaling teleseismic p waves from u s national seismic network terrascope and berkeley digital seismic network broadband stations we examined 42 earthquakes with depths from 100 to 660 km that occurred between july 1 1992 and july 31 1995 to directly compare time functions or to group them by size depth or region it is essential to scale them to remove the effect of moment which varies by more than 3 orders of magnitude for these events for each event we also computed short period stacks of p waves recorded by west coast regional arrays the comparison of broadband with short period stacks yields a considerable advantage enabling more reliable measurement of event duration a more accurate estimate of the duration better constrains the scaling procedure to remove the effect of moment producing scaled time functions with both correct timing and amplitude we find only subtle differences in the broadband time function shape with moment indicating successful scaling and minimal effects of attenuation at the periods considered here the average shape of the envelopes of the short period stacks is very similar to the average broadband time function the main variations seen with depth are 1 a mild decrease in duration with increasing depth 2 greater asymmetry in the time functions of intermediate events compared to deep ones and 3 unexpected complexity and late moment release for events between 350 and 550 km with seven of the eight events in that depth interval displaying markedly more complicated time functions with more moment release late in the rupture than most events above or below the first two results are broadly consistent with our previous studies while the third is reported here for the first time the greater complexity between 350 and 550 km suggests greater heterogeneity in the failure process in that depth range

the 1994 java tsunami earthquake and its normal aftershocks 1 we compare the source spectra of the 1994 java tsunami earthquake mw 7 9 and its two largest aftershocks the source spectra of the aftershocks from teleseismic p waves can be fit remarkably well by a standard 2 model however the mainshock shows a lower moment release at periods of 1 20 sec than its aftershocks although its total moment is 1000 times larger we analyze this discrepancy by exploring two mechanisms that in a simple haskell rupture model will decrease one of the corner frequencies of the source spectrum 1 lowering the rupture velocity and 2 lowering the particle slip velocity both changes maintain an identical spectral drop off and static stress drop and result in the characteristic spectral shape of a slow earthquake these kinematic models can be related to physical rupture parameters by considering the earthquake energy budget in both cases the radiated seismic energy is lowered either due to a higher frictional stress during the break down phase increasing the fracture energy case 1 or by an increase in the sliding stress case 2 we do not suggest that either of these simplified models is the only possible interpretation but want to illustrate the danger in directly interpreting slow earthquakes as having a low rupture velocity

triggering of earthquakes during the 2000 papua new guinea earthquake sequence 1 a sequence of large earthquakes occurred in the new britain new ireland region of papua new guinea in late 2000 the sequence started with a mw 6 8 earthquake along the new britain trench on 29 october about 20 days later a mw 8 2 earthquake occurred in the new ireland region on 16 november and produced large strike slip surface displacements and tsunamis following the mw 8 2 event two large earthquakes mw 7 5 occurred along the nearby new britain trench on 16 and 17 november furthermore small triggered events were observed over a wide area outside of the rupture zones of the large earthquakes with different focal mechanisms from those of the major events there is likely some mechanism s that triggered this remarkable sequence and we document the details of the spatial and temporal patterns of the events we investigated if static stress changes can explain the initiation of the large earthquakes and also some groups of triggered smaller events there are mixed results the occurrences of the two m 7 5 major events may be explained by the static stress changes however there are also some earthquakes that are not consistent with triggering by static stress changes there may be multiple mechanisms including static and dynamic stress changes that are needed to explain the complicated sequence of earthquakes

rupture length and duration of the 2004 aceh sumatra earthquake from the phases of the earth s gravest free oscillations 1 the aceh sumatra 2004 earthquake strongly excited the earth s free oscillations well separated split multiplets provide useful information on the earthquake source particularly the phases of split singlets constrain the duration rupture length and mean rupture velocity we analyze the initial phases of some of the earth s gravest free oscillations 0s2 0s3 0s0 and 1s0 in order to constrain the space time finiteness of the source we use recordings of vertical broadband seismometers and superconducting gravimeters from several worldwide geophysical networks we estimate a rupture length of about 1220 km a source time duration of about 500 s and a mean rupture velocity of 2 4 km s

teleseismic search for slow precursors to large earthquakes some large earthquakes display low frequency seismic anomalies that are best explained by episodes of slow smooth deformation immediately before their high frequency origin times analysis of the low frequency spectra of 107 shallow focus earthquakes revealed 20 events that had slow precursors 95 percent confidence level 19 were slow earthquakes associated with the ocean ridge transform system and 1 was a slow earthquake on an intracontinental transform fault in the east african rift system these anomalous earthquakes appear to be compound events each comprising one or more ordinary fast ruptures in the shallow seismogenic zone initiated by a precursory slow event in the adjacent or subjacent lithosphere

modeling the seismic source and tsunami generation of the december 12 1992 flores island indonesia earthquake on december 12 1992 a large earthquake m s 7 5 occurred just north of flores island indonesia which along with the tsunami it generated killed more than 2 000 people in this study teleseismicp andsh waves as well aspp waves from distances up to 123 are inverted for the orientations and time histories of multiple point sources by repeating the inversion for reasonable values of depth time separation and spatial separation a 2 fault model is developed next the vertical deformation of the seafloor is estimated from this fault model using a detailed bathymetric model linear and nonlinear tsunami propagation models are tested the data consist of a single tide gauge record at palopo 650 km to the north as well as tsunami runup height measurements from flores island and nearby islands assuming a tsunami runup amplification factor of two the two fault model explains the tide gauge record and the tsunami runup heights on most of flores island it cannot however explain the large tsunami runup heights observed near leworahang on hading bay and riangkroko on the northeast peninsula massive coastal slumping was observed at both of these locations a final model which in addition to the two faults includes point sources of large vertical displacement at these two locations explains the observations quite well

the 2009 samoa tonga great earthquake triggered doublet great earthquakes having seismic magnitudes of at least 8 usually involve abrupt sliding of rock masses at a boundary between tectonic plates such interplate ruptures produce dynamic and static stress changes that can activate nearby intraplate aftershocks as is commonly observed in the trench slope region seaward of a great subduction zone thrust event1 the earthquake sequence addressed here involves a rare instance in which a great trench slope intraplate earthquake triggered extensive interplate faulting reversing the typical pattern and broadly expanding the seismic and tsunami hazard on 29 september 2009 within two minutes of the initiation of a normal faulting event with moment magnitude 8 1 in the outer trench slope at the northern end of the tonga subduction zone two major interplate underthrusting subevents both with moment magnitude 7 8 with total moment equal to a second great earthquake of moment magnitude 8 0 ruptured the nearby subduction zone megathrust the collective faulting produced tsunami waves with localized regions of about 12 metres run up that claimed 192 lives in samoa american samoa and tonga overlap of the seismic signals obscured the fact that distinct faults separated by more than 50 km had ruptured with different geometries with the triggered thrust faulting only being revealed by detailed seismic wave analyses extensive interplate and intraplate aftershock activity was activated over a large region of the northern tonga subduction zone

rupture characteristics of the 2003 mw 7 6 mid indian ocean earthquake implications for seismic properties of young oceanic lithosphere 1 analysis of broadband seismograms from the 15 july 2003 large earthquake m 7 6 in the central indian ocean reveals an unusual source process the source duration of longer than a minute is more than twice as long as expected from earthquake scaling relations yet 80 of the moment release occurred in two energetic asperities near the end of the rupture these two asperities were located in lithosphere with an age of 7 ma or greater a previous study has suggested that strike slip earthquakes in oceanic lithosphere having much longer than expected source durations also have a slow dissipative rupture process characterized by low radiated seismic energy and therefore low apparent stress we find no evidence for a slow rupture process to the 2003 earthquake instead the long duration appears to be due only to nucleation close to the actively spreading carlsberg ridge in lithosphere younger than 7 ma younger oceanic lithosphere may be able to generate small to moderate earthquakes but be unable to sustain slip in a large event due to steady release of strain in aseismic creep events large strike slip earthquakes within oceanic lithosphere may occur only in the central portions of long transform faults or in intraplate regions rupturing energetic asperities like those that failed in the mid indian ocean earthquake and leading to the observation that oceanic strike slip earthquakes have the largest apparent stresses among the global population of shallow earthquakes

teleseismic estimates of radiated seismic energy the e m 0 discriminant for tsunami earthquakes we adapt the formalism of boatwright and choy for the computation of radiated seismic energy from broadband records at teleseismic distances to the real time situation when neither the depth nor the focal geometry of the source is known accurately the analysis of a large data set of more than 500 records from 52 large recent earthquakes shows that this procedure yields values of the estimated energy ee in good agreement with values computed from available source parameters for example as published by the national earthquake information center neic the average logarithmic residual being only 0 26 units we analyze the energy to moment ratio by defining log10 ee m0 for regular earthquakes this parameter agrees well with values expected from theoretical models and from the worldwide neic catalogue there is a one to one correspondence between values of that are deficient by one full unit or more and the so called tsunami earthquakes previously identified in the literature as having exceedingly slow sources and believed due to the presence of sedimentary structures in the fault zone our formalism can be applied to single station measurements and its coupling to automated real time measurements of the seismic moment using the mantle magnitude mm should significantly improve real time tsunami warning

the 25 october 2010 mentawai tsunami earthquake mw 7 8 and the tsunami hazard presented by shallow megathrust ruptures the 25 october 2010 mentawai indonesia earthquake m w 7 8 ruptured the shallow portion of the subduction zone seaward of the mentawai islands off shore of sumatra generating 3 to 9 m tsunami run up along southwestern coasts of the pagai islands that took at least 431 lives analyses of teleseismic p sh and rayleigh waves for finite fault source rupture characteristics indicate 90 s rupture duration with a low rupture velocity of 1 5 km s on the 10 dipping megathrust with total slip of 2 4 m over an 100 km long source region the seismic moment scaled energy release is 1 4 10 6 lower than 2 4 10 6 found for the 17 july 2006 java tsunami earthquake m w 7 8 the mentawai event ruptured up dip of the slip region of the 12 september 2007 kepulauan earthquake m w 7 9 and together with the 4 january 1907 m 7 6 tsunami earthquake located seaward of simeulue island to the northwest along the arc demonstrates the significant tsunami generation potential for shallow megathrust ruptures in regions up dip of great underthrusting events in indonesia and elsewhere

rupture characteristics of the 2005 tarapaca northern chile intermediate depth earthquake evidence for heterogeneous fluid distribution across the subducting oceanic plate 1 we examined the rupture of the 2005 tarapaca northern chile earthquake at about 110 km depth with respect to both kinematic and dynamic characteristics by using regional and teleseismic waveforms the earthquake has a downdip tensional focal mechanism the subhorizontal rupture is characterized by two patches of large slip and high stress drop which are aligned nearly in the east west direction being perpendicular to the direction of the chile trench rupture initiated in the eastern patch and then propagated to the western patch between the two patches there exists a region of nonpositive stress drop and high strength excess which can cause subshear rupture to propagate from the eastern to the western patches but radiates little seismic waves seismic radiation energy from this earthquake tends to be low which is consistent with the nonpositive stress drop and high strength excess between the two patches while the physical mechanism of intermediate depth earthquakes is still controversial current leading hypotheses are associated with dehydration within subducting plates the rupture characteristics of the tarapaca earthquake can be related to heterogeneous fluid distribution due to the dehydration the spatial separation and dominant stress of the two large slip patches agree with the characteristics of the previously reported double seismic zone beneath chile the two patches may be the manifestation of the double seismic zone where dehydration reactions can release fluid using a numerical simulation of 3 d dynamic rupture we have shown that weakening due to fluid can account for the rupture characteristics of the tarapaca earthquake

resolution of the slow earthquake high apparent stress paradox for oceanic transform fault earthquakes 1 oceanic transform fault earthquakes exhibit some interesting and apparently contradictory properties a number of earthquakes on oceanic transforms have been identified as slow on the basis of their weak seismic radiation at high frequencies on the other hand transform fault events as a population have been found to have high apparent stress indicating strong high frequency radiation since the seismic energy is concentrated at and above the corner frequency in an attempt to reconcile these observations we analyze seventy 5 8 mw 8 3 strike slip earthquakes from around the world four of these earthquakes have both exceptionally low apparent stress and large centroid time shifts for their seismic moment all four of them are located on oceanic transform faults if we include these events in the population we find that continental and oceanic strike slip earthquakes are not significantly different in their mean apparent stress but that there is greater variation for oceanic events we also find that in contrast to the low correlation between centroid time shift and apparent stress for continental earthquakes the oceanic ridge transform earthquakes have a high correlation between these two parameters we also observe cases of both ordinary and slow earthquakes on adjacent sections of the same transform these characteristics suggest significant differences in the faulting process between oceanic transforms and continental faults

source process of the 21 april 1997 santa cruz island earthquake mw 7 8 we apply an empirical green s function method to recordings of teleseismic body waves from the april 21 1997 santa cruz island earthquake the far field moment rate functions reveal that rupture occured on a shallow dipping fault plane dip 17 the main rupture consists of 6 large subevents and covers a total area of about 5000 km while the hypocenter is fixed at 33 km depth the main slip is located above 20 km depth within the accretionary wedge the source duration is about 70 sec and the average rupture velocity is found to be 1 9 km sec this event caused a local tsunami and although it is not possible to determine whether it was caused by tectonic faulting or submarine shaking the fact that most of the moment release occured at shallow depths is consistent with either of these possibilities and points to the utility of the procedure outlined here in possible rapid characterization of tsunami potential

a reassessment of the rupture characteristics of oceanic transform earthquakes 1 we investigate the long period source spectra of oceanic transform earthquakes and find that previously proposed slow rupture components can be explained as artifacts generated by the modeling procedure we use low frequency 20 mhz rayleigh and love waves to calculate the amplitude spectra of five earthquakes on the romanche and chain transform faults in the equatorial mid atlantic ocean we find that errors and approximations in the centroid depth focal mechanism and earth structure at the source have significant effects on the shape of the source spectra if global catalog values and an average crustal model are assumed the spectra exhibit apparent anomalous energy at long periods which has previously been interpreted as a result of slow rupture we recalculate the source spectra using precise independently determined depths and moment tensors and a more realistic oceanic crustal structure in the source region the resulting source spectra are flat at long periods with no indication of anomalous long period energy our results imply that oceanic transform earthquakes do not commonly have detectable slow rupture components

the 25 october 2010 mentawai tsunami earthquake from real time discriminants finite fault rupture and tsunami excitation 1 the moment magnitude 7 8 earthquake that struck offshore the mentawai islands in western indonesia on 25 october 2010 created a locally large tsunami that caused more than 400 human causalities we identify this earthquake as a rare slow source tsunami earthquake based on 1 disproportionately large tsunami waves 2 excessive rupture duration near 125 s 3 predominantly shallow near trench slip determined through finite fault modeling and 4 deficiencies in energy to moment and energy to duration cubed ratios the latter in near real time we detail the real time solutions that identified the slow nature of this event and evaluate how regional reductions in crustal rigidity along the shallow trench as determined by reduced rupture velocity contributed to increased slip causing the 5 9 m local tsunami runup and observed transoceanic wave heights observed 1600 km to the southeast

comprehensive analysis of earthquake source spectra in southern california we compute and analyze p wave spectra from earthquakes in southern california between 1989 and 2001 using a method that isolates source receiver and path dependent terms we correct observed source spectra for attenuation using both fixed and spatially varying empirical green s function methods estimated brune type stress drops for over 60 000 m l 1 5 to 3 1 earthquakes range from 0 2 to 20 mpa with no dependence on moment or local b value median computed stress drop increases with depth in the upper crust from about 0 6 mpa at the surface to about 2 2 mpa at 8 km where it levels off and remains nearly constant in the midcrust down to about 20 km however the results at shallow depths could also be explained as reduced rupture velocities near the surface rather than a change in stress drop spatially coherent variations in median stress drop are observed with generally low values for the imperial valley and northridge aftershocks and higher values for the eastern transverse ranges and the north end of the san jacinto fault we find no correlation between observed stress drop and distance from the san andreas and other major faults significant along strike variations in stress drop exist for aftershocks of the 1992 landers earthquake which may correlate with differences in main shock slip

global variations of stress drop for moderate to large earthquakes 1 we investigate the global variation of earthquake stress drops using spectra of about 2000 events of mb 5 5 between 1990 and 2007 we use an iterative least squares method to isolate source displacement spectra from travel path and receiver contributions based on a convolutional model the observed p wave source spectra are corrected with a globally averaged empirical correction spectrum and estimates of near source attenuation assuming a brune type source model we estimate corner frequencies and compute stress drops stress drop estimates for individual earthquakes range from about 0 3 to 50 mpa but the median stress drop of about 4 mpa does not vary with moment implying earthquake self similarity over the mw 5 2 to 8 3 range of our data a comparison of our results with previous studies confirms this observation over most of the instrumentally observable magnitude range while the absolute values of our estimated stress drops depend upon the assumed source model we identify relative regional variations of stress drop that are robust with respect to the processing parameters and modeling assumptions which includes an inherent assumption of constant rupture velocity we find a dependence of median stress drop on focal mechanism with a factor of 3 5 times higher stress drops for strike slip earthquakes and also find a factor of 2 times higher stress drops for intraplate earthquakes compared to interplate earthquakes

the 1992 nicaragua earthquake a slow tsunami earthquake associated with subducted sediments the 1992 nicaragua earthquake was a tsunami earthquake that is it generated tsunamis disproportionately large for its surface wave magnitude m s the moment magnitude m w determined from long period 250 s surface waves was 7 6 significantly larger than the 20 s m s of 7 this m s m w disparity is also characteristic of tsunami earthquakes the nicaragua earthquake is the first tsunami earthquake to be captured by modern broadband seismic networks allowing us to present here seismograms of sufficiently high quality to make inferences about the rupture mechanisms we conclude that the nicaragua earthquake was a slow thrust earthquake which occurred on the subduction interface between the cocos and north american plates and because of the absence of sediments on the trench floor offshore of nicaragua the slip propagated up dip all the way to the ocean bottom exciting large tsunamis the occurrence of slip on a plate interface filled with soft subducted sediments caused the rupture process to be slower than in ordinary subduction zone thrust earthquakes our results reinforce the idea that tsunami warning systems using long period 100 s waves are necessary to reduce the hazard from this type of earthquake

the 1994 java tsunami earthquake slip over a subducting seamount on june 2 1994 a large subduction thrust earthquake ms 7 2 produced a devastating tsunami on the island of java this earthquake had a number of unusual characteristics it was the first recorded large thrust earthquake on the java subduction zone all of the aftershock mechanisms exhibit normal faulting no mechanisms are similar to the main shock also the large tsunami and the relatively low energy radiated by the main shock have led to suggestions that this earthquake might have involved slow shallow rupture near the trench similar to the 1992 nicaragua earthquake we first relocate the main shock and the aftershocks we then invert long period surface waves and broadband body waves to determine the depth and spatial distribution of the main shock slip a dip of 12 hypocenter depth of 16 km and moment of 3 5 l020 n m mw 7 6 give the best fit to the combined seismic data and are consistent with the plate interface geometry the source spectrum obtained from both body and surface waves has a single corner frequency between 10 and 20 mhz implying a stress drop of 0 3 mpa the main energy release was preceded by a small subevent lasting 12 s the main slip occurred at 20 km depth downdip and to the nw of the hypocenter this area of slip is collocated with a prominent high in the bathymetry that has been identified as a subducting seamount we interpret the java earthquake as slip over this subducting seamount which is a locked patch in an otherwise decoupled subduction zone we find no evidence for slow shallow rupture no thrust aftershocks are expected if the entire locked zone slipped during the main shock but extension of the subducting plate behind the seamount would promote normal faulting as observed it seems probable that such a source model could also explain the size and timing of the observed tsunami

the 17 july 2006 java tsunami earthquake the 17 july 2006 java earthquake involved thrust faulting in the java trench and excited a deadly tsunami 5 8 m that inundated the southern coast of java the earthquake s size estimates vary significantly with seismic wave period very long period signals 300 500 s indicate a seismic moment of 6 7 10 20 nm m w 7 8 m s 20 s 7 2 m b 1 s 6 2 while shaking intensities 3 10 hz were mmiv the large tsunami relative to ms characterizes this event as a tsunami earthquake like previous tsunami earthquakes the java event had an unusually low rupture speed of 1 0 1 5 km s and occurred near the up dip edge of the subduction zone thrust fault most large aftershocks involved normal faulting the rupture propagated 200 km along the trench with several pulses of shorter period seismic radiation superimposed on a smooth background rupture with an overall duration of 185 s

origin and epeirogenic history of the williston basin evidence from fission track analysis of apatite we have tested the hypothesis that the lithosphere beneath the williston basin was heated uplifted and eroded prior to basin subsidence this was accomplished by fission track dating of apatite from samples of basement rock beneath and adjacent to the basin apatite fission track ages of basement rocks beneath the basin range from about 4 ma near the center to 554 ma near the eastern edge combined with stratigraphic evidence the ages suggest that at least 3 km of basement were eroded prior to subsidence of the williston basin rates of apparent uplift and erosion were on the order of 0 10 to 0 15 km m y apatite fission track ages of basement outcrop samples on the eastern flank of the basin range from about 572 ma to 441 ma these ages suggest that erosion of the flank occurred from the early cambrian to the late ordovician we conclude that timing of uplift of the basement prior to subsidence of the williston basin is consistent with the thermal origin hypothesis of basin formation

the 2010 mw 7 8 mentawai earthquake very shallow source of a rare tsunami earthquake determined from tsunami field survey and near field gps data 1 the mw 7 8 october 2010mentawai indonesia earthquake was a tsunami earthquake a rare type of earthquake that generates a tsunami much larger than expected based on the seismicmagnitude itproducedalocallydevastatingtsunami withrunupcommonlyinexcess of 6 m we examine this event using a combination of high rate gps data from instruments located on the nearby islands and a tsunami field survey the gps displacement time series are deficient in high frequency energy and show small coseismic displacements 16 m our modeling results show that the combination of the small gps displacements and large tsunami can only be explained by high fault slip at very shallow depths far from the islands and close to the oceanic trench inelastic uplift of trench sediments likely contributed to the size of the tsunami recent results for the 2011 mw 9 0 tohoko oki earthquake have also shown shallow fault slip but the results from our study which involves a smaller earthquake provide much stronger constraints on how shallow the rupture can be with the majority of slip for the mentawai earthquake occurring at depths of 6 km this result challenges the conventional wisdom that the shallow tips of subduction megathrusts are aseismic and therefore raises important questions both about the mechanical properties of the shallow fault zone and the potential seismic and tsunami hazard of this shallow region

total moment spectra of fourteen large earthquakes total moment spectra mt m where m is the moment rate tensor are computed for 14 large earthquakes recorded by the international deployment of accelerometers ida network using the scalar moment retrieval method proposed by silver and jordan 1982 for each event we obtain estimates of mt averaged over the 10 disjunct 1 mhz intervals in the low frequency band 1 11 mhz typical ida record sets from events with mt 0 2 a 1 a 1027 dyne cm yield standard errors on the 1 mhz averages that are generally less than 20 our multiple band estimates of mt are usually consistent with comparable single band values found by other investigators from the total moment spectra we derive the zero frequency static moment mt 0 and the characteristic source duration c 2 var f t where f t is the time function of the moment rate tensor assumed to be the same for all components the parameter c formally depends on the second degree temporal spatial and mixed spatial temporal moments of an extended source but calculations with realistic source geometries indicate that the interpretation of tc strictly in terms of the second temporal moment leads to very little error a plot of c against shows considerable scatter some events lie significantly above the empirical scaling curve of kanamori and given 1981 slow earthquakes and some below fast earthquakes examples of the former include all three deep focus events analyzed here as well as the 1970 colombia and 1963 peru bolivia deep focus earthquakes whose total moment spectra are calculated from the moment tensor solutions of gilbert and dziewonski 1975 an example of the latter is the great sumbawa earthquake of august 9 1977 24 3 a which is inferred to have a relatively shallow spatial centroid 20 km and a nearly flat moment spectrum suggesting that the faulting was confined to the upper more brittle portion of the oceanic lithosphere three other large earthquakes tonga june 22 1977 23 2 a kuril islands december 6 1978 3 6 0 2 a and tumaco december 12 1979 25 2 a exhibit moment spectra which significantly decrease toward higher frequencies indicating larger values of c the aftershocks of both the tonga and kuril islands events are distributed over a considerable range of depths consistent with rupture into the lower more ductile portions of the oceanic lithosphere we speculate that the characteristic source duration may be causally related to the depth of coseismic rupturing within the lithosphere

the sanriku oki japan earthquake of december 28 1994 mw 7 7 rupture of a different asperity from a previous earthquake fault geometry depth and slip distribution of the sanriku oki earthquake of december 28 1994 ms 7 5 are estimated from seismic waveforms geodetic measurements and tsunami waveforms and compared with those of the 1968 tokachi oki earthquake mw 8 2 the most recent large earthquake in the epicentral region seismic wave inversions indicate a shallowly dipping thrust type mechanism and the focal depth of 22 28 km representing an underthrust event at the subduction interface the source time function has an initial stage of 20 s followed by a main pulse of 30 s duration a shape similar to that of the 1968 tokachi oki earthquake joint inversion of geodetic and tsunami data shows that the region of the largest slip 1 7 m corresponds to a region of relatively small slip for the 1968 tokachi oki earthquake furthermore the joint inversion shows that the region of the largest asperity of the 1968 earthquake had essentially zero slip during the 1994 sanriku oki earthquake these results indicate that the dominant asperities ruptured by the 1994 sanriku and 1968 tokachi oki earthquakes are different the result of the joint inversion also shows that the aseismic zone near the japan trench was not ruptured by the 1994 earthquake