mw 8 6 sumatran earthquake of 11 april 2012 rare seaward expression of oblique subduction the magnitude 8 6 and 8 2 earthquakes off northwestern sumatra on 11 april 2012 generated small tsunami waves that were recorded by stations around the indian ocean combining differential travel time modeling of tsunami waves with results from back projection of seismic data reveals a complex source with a significant trench parallel component the oblique plate convergence indicates that 20 50 m of trench parallel displacement could have accumulated since the last megathrust earthquake only part of which has been taken up by the great sumatran fault this suggests that the remaining trench parallel motion was released during the magnitude 8 6 earthquake on 11 april 2012 within the subducting plate the magnitude 8 6 earthquake is interpreted to be a result of oblique subduction as well as a reduction in normal stress due to the occurrence of the sumatra andaman earthquake in 2004

the relationship between pedogenic and geomorphic processes in mountainous tropical forested area in sierra madre del sur mexico abstract both mature and underdeveloped soils are present in tropical mountainous landscapes the spatial arrangement of mountainous soils is ascribed mainly to geomorphologic processes we studied two soil toposequences one on a convex and the other on a concave slope with a gradient 40 60 at the coffee growing farm la cabana situated in the mountains of the sierra madre del sur southern mexico mature alisols as well as moderately developed luvic phaeozems and underdeveloped soils fluvic and skeletic phaeozems were detected in the study area the sequence of sediments and soils is unusual for a classical soil catena buried clayey reddish soils are present on the shoulder of a slope colluvial sediments with weakly developed soils form convex and concave footslopes the peculiarity of the slopes and spatial distribution of soils in the studied toposequences were ascribed to intensive linear erosion due to tectonic uplift seismically induced landslides and k cycles of laminar erosion the diversity of sediments leads to considerable variation in soil texture and mineralogical composition and thus to the diversity of soil properties which is considered to be a positive feature of a landscape

some tsunami characteristics deducible from tide records abstract after an initial 40 hour diffusion period the time decay of tsunami variance was found to be uniformly exponents for 28 events among eight pacific tide stations thew results essentially confirm munk s acoustic deny hypothesis except that the decay e folding time 22 h more nearly equated the ocean s normal mode transit time 21 h than munk s mean collision time 14 h relative tsunami energy obtained by extrapolating exponential decay back to t 0 was found to be similarly ranked among tsunamis at all stations and roughly proportional to seismic energy a total energy estimate for the tsunami of 9 march 1957 obtained by correcting the observed energy decay at wake island for instrument and island response provided normalized total energy estimates for all tsunamis that were consistent with independent estimates by kajiura and by aida similarities between power spectra computed from these time series suggests that station response is primarily linear normal mode forcing of the conti

probabilistic forecasting of earthquakes we present long term and short term forecasts for magnitude 5 8 and larger earthquakes we discuss a method for optimizing both procedures and testing their forecasting effectiveness using the likelihood function our forecasts are expressed as the rate density that is the probability per unit area and time anywhere on the earth our forecasts are for scientific testing only they are not to be construed as earthquake predictions or warnings and they carry no official endorsement for our long term forecast we assume that the rate density is proportional to a smoothed version of past seismicity using the harvard cmt catalogue this is in some ways antithetical to the seismic gap model which assumes that recent earthquakes deter future ones the estimated rate density depends linearly on the magnitude of past earthquakes and approximately on a negative power of the epicentral distance out to a few hundred kilometres we assume no explicit time dependence although the estimated rate density will vary slightly from day to day as earthquakes enter the catalogue the forecast applies to the ensemble of earthquakes during the test period it is not meant to predict any single earthquake and no single earthquake or lack of one is adequate to evaluate such a hypothesis we assume that 1 per cent of all earthquakes are surprises assumed uniformly likely to occur in those areas with no earthquakes since 1977 we have made specific forecasts for the calendar year 1999 for the northwest pacific and southwest pacific regions and we plan to expand the forecast to the whole earth we test the forecast against the earthquake catalogue using a likelihood test and present the results our short term forecast updated daily makes explicit use of statistical models describing earthquake clustering like the long term forecast the short term version is expressed as a rate density in location magnitude and time however the short term forecasts will change significantly from day to day in response to recent earthquakes the forecast applies to main shocks aftershocks aftershocks of aftershocks and main shocks preceded by foreshocks however there is no need to label each event and the method is completely automatic according to the model nearly 10 per cent of moderately sized earthquakes will be followed by larger ones within a few weeks

global ubiquity of dynamic earthquake triggering surface waves that were generated by 12 out of 15 earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 7 since 1990 led to a global increase in the number of small earthquakes this suggests that dynamic triggering of earthquakes is common and is independent of the tectonic environment earthquakes can be triggered by local changes in the stress field static triggering1 2 3 4 5 6 7 due to nearby earthquakes or by stresses caused by the passage of surface rayleigh and love waves from a remote large earthquake dynamic triggering8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 however the mechanism frequency controlling factors and the global extent of dynamic triggering are yet to be fully understood because rayleigh waves involve compressional and dilatational particle motion volumetric changes as well as shearing whereas love waves only involve shearing triggering by either wave type implies fundamentally different physical mechanisms here we analyse broadband seismograms from over 500 globally distributed stations and use an automated approach to systematically identify small triggered earthquakes the low amplitude signals of such earthquakes would normally be masked by high amplitude surface waves our analysis reveals that out of 15 earthquakes studied of magnitude m greater than 7 0 that occurred after 1990 12 are associated with significant increases in the detection of smaller earthquakes during the passage of both the love and rayleigh waves we conclude that dynamic triggering is a ubiquitous phenomenon that is independent of the tectonic environment of the main earthquake or the triggered event

on the relationship between lower magnitude thresholds and bias in epidemic type aftershock sequence parameter estimates 1 modern earthquake catalogs are often described using spatial temporal point process models such as the epidemic type aftershock sequence etas models of ogata 1998 earthquake catalogs often have issues of incompleteness and other inaccuracies for earthquakes of magnitude below a certain threshold and such earthquakes are typically removed prior to fitting a point process model this paper investigates the bias in the parameters in etas models introduced by the removal of the smallest events it is shown that in the case of most of the etas parameters the bias increases approximately exponentially as a function of the lower magnitude cutoff

seismic triggering of submarine slides in soft cohesive soil deposits abstract the geological profile of many submerged slopes on the continental shelf consists of normally to lightly overconsolidated clays with depths ranging from a few meters to hundreds of meters for these soils earthquake loading can generate significant excess pore water pressures at depth which can bring the slope to a state of instability during the event or at a later time as a result of pore pressure redistribution within the soil profile seismic triggering mechanisms of landslide initiation for these soils are analyzed with the use of a new simplified model for clays which predicts realistic variations of the stress strain strength relationships as well as pore pressure generation during dynamic loading in simple shear the proposed model is implemented in a finite element program to analyze the seismic response of submarine slopes these analyses provide an assessment of the critical depth and estimated displacements of the mobilized materials and thus are important components for the estimation of submarine landslide induced tsunamis

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

comparison of etas parameter estimates across different global tectonic zones abstract branching point process models such as the epidemic type aftershock sequence etas models introduced by ogata 1988 1998 are often used in the description characterization simulation and declustering of modern earthquake catalogs the present work investigates how the parameters in these models vary across different tectonic zones after considering divisions of the surface of the earth into several zones based on the plate boundary model of bird 2003 etas models are fit to the occurrence times and locations of shallow earthquakes within each zone computationally the expectation maximization em type algorithm of veen and schoenberg 2008 is employed for the purpose of model fitting the fits and variations in parameter estimates for distinct zones are compared and seismological implications are discussed in particular we find that estimated background seismicity rates range by a factor of nearly 500 for interplate and trench events respectively the estimated productivity parameter governing the relationship between the magnitude of an earthquake and its expected number of direct aftershocks ranges by a factor of more than five from events in the slow moving zone to events in active continental areas suggesting a much higher rate of swarming in the ridges than in the trenches and active continental zones despite the pronounced differences between the seismicity patterns and parameter estimates in the different zones the etas model with few parameters and with the same functional form seems to fit reasonably well to the seismicity in each zone

earthquake forecasting in diverse tectonic zones of the globe we present a simple method for long and short term earthquake forecasting estimating earthquake rate per unit area time and magnitude for illustration we apply the method to the pacific plate boundary region and the mediterranean area surrounding italy and greece our ultimate goal is to develop forecasting and testing methods to validate or falsify common assumptions regarding earthquake potential our immediate purpose is to extend the forecasts we made starting in 1999 for the northwest and southwest pacific to include somewhat smaller earthquakes and then adapt the methods to apply in other areas the previous forecasts used the cmt earthquake catalog to forecast magnitude 5 8 and larger earthquakes like our previous forecasts the new ones here are based on smoothed maps of past seismicity and assume spatial clustering our short term forecasts also assume temporal clustering an important adaptation in the new forecasts is to abandon the use of tensor focal mechanisms this permits use of earthquake catalogs that reliably report many smaller quakes with no such mechanism estimates the result is that we can forecast earthquakes at higher spatial resolution and down to a magnitude threshold of 4 7 the new forecasts can be tested far more quickly because smaller events are considerably more frequent also our previous method used the focal mechanisms of past earthquakes to estimate the preferred directions of earthquake clustering however the method made assumptions that generally hold in subduction zones only the new approach escapes those assumptions in the northwest pacific the new method gives estimated earthquake rate density very similar to that of the previous forecast

explanation of temporal clustering of tsunami sources using the epidemic type aftershock sequence model temporal clustering of tsunami sources is examined in terms of a branching process model it previously was observed that there are more short interevent times between consecutive tsunami sources than expected from a stationary poisson process the epidemic type aftershock sequence etas branching process model is fitted to tsunami catalog events using the earthquake magnitude of the causative event from the centennial and global centroid moment tensor cmt catalogs and tsunami sizes above a completeness level as a mark to indicate that a tsunami was generated the etas parameters are estimated using the maximum likelihood method the interevent distribution associated with the etas model provides a better fit to the data than the poisson model or other temporal clustering models when tsunamigenic conditions magnitude threshold submarine location dip slip mechanism are applied to the global cmt catalog etas parameters are obtained that are consistent with those estimated from the tsunami catalog in particular the dip slip condition appears to result in a near zero magnitude effect for triggered tsunami sources the overall consistency between results from the tsunami catalog and that from the earthquake catalog under tsunamigenic conditions indicates that etas models based on seismicity can provide the structure for understanding patterns of tsunami source occurrence the fractional rate of triggered tsunami sources on a global basis is approximately 14 online material figures of residual analysis for tsunami and earthquake catalogs

evidence of clustering and nonstationarity in the time distribution of large worldwide earthquakes 1 the purpose of this paper is to characterize the statistical distribution of worldwide largest earthquakes we analyze the distribution of worldwide shallow events with ms 7 0 since 1900 by following the occam s razor philosophy we start from the simplest possible model stationary poisson process and we inspect more complicated models only if the data show significant departures from the simplest one the results show two important characteristics first worldwide ms 7 0 earthquakes tend to cluster in time and space with features similar to smaller events second for some seismic regions there is evidence in favor of long term fluctuations of the earthquake rate these results support the hypothesis of universality suggesting that an etas model with a background varying with time can be considered reliable to describe the seismicity distribution over a wide space time magnitude window from a practical point of view our findings suggest that the paradigm that seismic zones are stationary systems implicitly assumed in seismic hazard assessment should be regarded with caution

a deep outer rise reverse fault earthquake immediately triggered a shallow normal fault earthquake the 7 december 2012 off sanriku earthquake mw 7 3 1 teleseismic body wave analysis revealed that the 7 december 2012 off sanriku earthquake mw 7 3 at the outer rise of japan trench consisted of two successive subevents the first subevent with reverse fault mechanism event 1 mw 7 1 at 56 km depth was followed by approximately 20 s later the second subevent with normal fault mechanism event 2 mw 7 2 at 6 km depth finite fault slip models show that the slip of event 1 was concentrated around the initial rupture point with the maximum of 2 7 m and that event 2 had two asperities with the maximum of 4 5 m at both sides of the initial rupture point the static coulomb failure function analyses suggested that event 1 triggered event 2 and that both subevents were promoted by the 2011 tohoku earthquake mw 9 1

single link cluster analysis of earthquake aftershocks decay laws and regional variations using single link cluster analysis the authors investigate how various properties of aftershock sequences depend on their tectonic regime and focal depth for international seismological centre earthquakes of m sub b ge 4 8 they find that earthquakes deeper than 70 km have the fewest and smallest aftershock sequences even after accounting for differences in detectability and maximum magnitude they find that ridge transform earthquakes have smaller aftershock sequences that shallow subduction zone earthquakes among different subduction zones they find that zones with high moment release rates possess larger aftershock sequences comparing ridge transform zones they find those with slower spreading rates possess larger aftershock sequences by transposing origin times of several different aftershock sequences as if all had main shocks occurring at time zero they are able to study the properties of aftershock sequences which individually have too few aftershocks to study by other means secondary events determined by single link cluster analysis follow a modified omori s power law decay for time separations of 0 1 day to 20 days from the parent event with p values ranging from 0 539 plus minus 0 022 intermediate and deep focus earthquakes to 0 928 plus minus 0 024 ridge transform earthquakes they find that earthquake foreshocks and multiplets also follow a modified omori s law atmore greater times from the main shock the decay is steeper than a power law decay more like an exponential decay aftershocks in the adak catalog m sub b ge 2 0 show a marked decrease in activity between 40 and 50 km depth they speculate that the observed differences in number of aftershocks and p values may be caused by variations in fault heterogeneity or in fluid pressures less

seismicity analysis through point process modeling a review the occurrence times of earthquakes can be considered to be a point process and suitable modeling of the conditional intensity function of a point process is useful for the investigation of various statistical features of seismic activity this manuscript summarizes likelihood based methods of analysis of point processes and reviews useful models for particular analyses of seismicity most of the analyses can be implemented by the computer programs published by the author and collaborators

tsunami earthquakes slow thrust faulting events in the accretionary wedge the november 20 1960 peru october 20 1963 kurile and june 10 1975 kurile earthquakes are classified as tsunami earthquakes based on anomalously large tsunami excitation relative to earthquake magnitude long period surface wave analysis indicates double couple faulting mechanisms for all three events rather than single force mechanisms indicative of submarine landslides the earthquakes have shallow depths 15 km and are located near the trench axis and seaward of most other thrust zone events beneath the accretionary prism body waveform inversion indicates very shallowly dipping thrust faulting mechanisms for the three events with dip angles of 6 8 surface wave spectral amplitudes and deconvolution of sh waveforms suggests anomalously long source durations and large seismic moments relative to ms specifically the 1963 kurile event ms 7 2 shows a duration of 85 s and a moment of 6 0 1027 dyn cm mw 7 8 the 1975 kurile event ms 7 0 shows a duration of 60 s and a moment of 2 0 1027 dyn cm mw 7 5 and the 1960 peru event ms 6 75 shows a time function consisting of four subevents with a total duration of 110 130 s and a seismic moment of 3 4 1027 dyn cm mw 7 6 estimated rupture velocities are about 1 km s or less but there is no evidence of unusually low stress drops the august 1 1968 philippines event previously classified as a tsunami earthquake shows none of the anomalous source properties and teleseismic tsunami height measurements are sparse we do not consider this event a tsunami earthquake most of the anomalous tsunami excitation results from underestimation of earthquake size by ms due to the long source duration the tsunami heights are not significantly anomalous relative to seismic moment the slow nature of these events may result from rupture through the sedimentary rock along the basal decollement of the accretionary prism standard scaling laws when adjusted for the slow seismic velocity in the source region show an mw ms relationship similar to that observed for the tsunami earthquakes and predict ms saturation at about 7 3 rather than 8 0 for typical events

new tropical carcharhinids chondrichthyes carcharhiniformes from the late eocene early oligocene of balochistan pakistan paleoenvironmental and paleogeographic implications new selachians sharks and rays have been collected from several late eocene and early oligocene marine localities in the bugti hills balochistan pakistan two new species of requiem sharks close to the recent bull shark are described carcharhinus balochensis and carcharhinus perseus the rest of the fauna is notable for the strong representation of carcharhiniformes these selachian faunas represent a unique tropical association for the oligocene period and one of the first modern tropical selachian faunas with modern taxa such as the two new species of bull sharks negaprion sp and one of the first occurrences of sphyrna sp moreover these faunas permit paleoenvironmental interpretation of adjacent land masses the relatively modern aspect of these faunas compared with other contemporaneous and younger selachian associations from atlantic and mediterranean seas suggests biogeographic isolation of selachian communities living in eastern and western parts of the tethys before its final closure during the early middle miocene

source depth dependence of micro tsunamis recorded with ocean bottom pressure gauges the january 28 2000 mw 6 8 earthquake off nemuro peninsula japan abstract micro tsunami waves with a maximum amplitude of 4 6 mm were detected with the ocean bottom pressure gauges on a cabled deep seafloor observatory south of hokkaido japan following the january 28 2000 earthquake m w 6 8 in the southern kuril subduction zone we model the observed micro tsunami and estimate the focal depth and other source parameters such as fault length and amount of slip using grid searching with the least squares method the source depth and stress drop for the january 2000 earthquake are estimated to be 50 km and 7 mpa respectively with possible ranges of 45 55 km and 4 13 mpa focal depth of typical inter plate earthquakes in this region ranges from 10 to 20 km and stress drop of inter plate earthquakes generally is around 3 mpa the source depth and stress drop estimates suggest that the earthquake was an intra slab event in the subducting pacific plate rather than an inter plate event in addition for a prescribed fault width of 30 km the fault length is estimated to be 15 km with possible ranges of 10 20 km which is the same as the previously determined aftershock distribution the corresponding estimate for seismic moment is 2 7 10 19 nm with possible ranges of 2 3 10 19 3 2 10 19 nm standard tide gauges along the nearby coast did not record any tsunami signal high precision ocean bottom pressure measurements offshore thus make it possible to determine fault parameters of moderate sized earthquakes in subduction zones using open ocean tsunami waveforms

the 2006 july 17 java indonesia tsunami from satellite imagery and numerical modelling a single or complex source summary the mw 7 8 2006 july 17 earthquake off the southern coast of java indonesia has been responsible for a very large tsunami causing more than 700 casualties the tsunami has been observed on at least 200 km of coastline in the region of pangandaran west java with run up heights from 5 to more than 20 m such a large tsunami with respect to the source magnitude has been attributed to the slow character of the seismic rupture defining the event as a so called tsunami earthquake but it has also been suggested that the largest run up heights are actually the result of a second local landslide source here we test whether a single slow earthquake source can explain the tsunami run up using a combination of new detailed data in the region of the largest run ups and comparison with modelled run ups for a range of plausible earthquake source models using high resolution satellite imagery spot 5 and quickbird the coastal impact of the tsunami is refined in the surroundings of the high security permisan prison on nusa kambangan island where 20 m run up had been recorded directly after the event these data confirm the extreme inundation lengths close to the prison and extend the area of maximum impact further along the nusa kambangan island about 20 km of shoreline where inundation lengths reach several hundreds of metres suggesting run up as high as 10 15 m tsunami modelling has been conducted in detail for the high run up permisan area nusa kambangan and the pltu power plant about 25 km eastwards where run up reached only 4 6 m and a video recording of the tsunami arrival is available for the permisan prison a high resolution dem was built from stereoscopic satellite imagery the regular basin of the pltu plant was designed using photographs and direct observations for the earthquake s mechanism both static infinite and finite kinematic ruptures are investigated using two published source models the models account rather well for the sea level variation at pltu showing a better agreement in arrival times with the finite rupture and predict the permisan area to be one of the regions where tsunami waves would have focussed however the earthquake models that match the data at ptlu do not predict that the wave heights at permisan are an overall maximum and do not predict there more than 10 m of the 21 observed hence our results confirm that an additional localized tsunami source off nusa kambangan island such as a submarine landslide may have increased the tsunami impact for the permisan site this reinforces the importance for hazard assessment of further mapping and understanding local potential for submarine sliding as a tsunami source added to usual earthquake sources

global omori law decay of triggered earthquakes large aftershocks outside the classical aftershock zone 1 triggered earthquakes can be large damaging and lethal as evidenced by the1999 shocks in turkey and the 2001 earthquakes in el salvador in this study earthquakes with ms 7 0 from the harvard centroid moment tensor cmt catalog are modeled as dislocations to calculate shear stress changes on subsequent earthquake rupture planes near enough to be affected about 61 of earthquakes that occurred near defined as having shear stress change 0 01 mpa the ms 7 0 shocks are associated with calculated shear stress increases while 39 are associated with shear stress decreases if earthquakes associated with calculated shear stress increases are interpreted as triggered then such events make up at least 8 of the cmt catalog globally these triggered earthquakes obey an omori law rate decay that lasts between 7 11 years after the main shock earthquakes associated with calculated shear stress increases occur at higher rates than background up to 240 km away from the main shock centroid omori s law is one of the few time predictable patterns evident in the global occurrence of earthquakes if large triggered earthquakes habitually obey omori s law then their hazard can be more readily assessed the characteristic rate change with time and spatial distribution can be used to rapidly assess the likelihood of triggered earthquakes following events of ms 7 0 i show an example application to the m 7 7 13 january 2001 el salvador earthquake where use of global statistics appears to provide a better rapid hazard estimate than coulomb stress change calculations