reassessment of the 1907 sumatra tsunami earthquake based on macroseismic seismological and tsunami observations and modeling on 4 january 1907 an earthquake occurred off the west coast of sumatra indonesia with an instrumental surface wave magnitude ms in the range of 7 5 8 0 at periods of 40 s the tsunami it generated was destructive on the islands of nias and simeulue where it killed hundreds and gave rise to the legend of the s mong this tsunami was also observed in other parts of the indian ocean basin relative to its instrumented magnitude the size of the tsunami was anomalous qualifying the event as a tsunami earthquake however unusually for a tsunami earthquake the shaking on nias was severe 7 ems we revisit the 1907 earthquake with a multidisciplinary approach by extracting evidence describing shaking effects or the tsunami from written documents and by acquiring new seismograms combining these we discriminate two large earthquakes within an hour of each other with clear differences in seismological character the first we interpret to be a tsunami earthquake with characteristic low levels of shaking an estimated average seismic moment m0 of 2 5 1028 dyn cm mw 8 2 in the frequency band 6 8 mhz and an epicentral location close to the front of the sunda megathrust the seismograms we analyzed also document a regular growth of moment with period approaching mw 8 4 at the longest resolvable period 170 s for the second earthquake that caused damage on nias we estimate ms 7 based on seismograms and phase data we also identify two ms 6 aftershocks within 24 h of the mainshock additionally we present a dataset of 88 locations within the indian ocean basin where the tsunami was observed using a subset of these we forward modeled the tsunami to propose a seismic rupture model extending along the sunda megathrust for about 220 km 94 7 e to 97 e with a maximum modeled slip of 21 m our new rupture model provides an acceptable fit to our new dataset of tsunami runup and inundation values from 88 local and far field locations in the indian ocean basin we also urge caution against an over reliance on the s mong legend for tsunami evacuation as its premise that a tsunami will only follow an earthquake with very severe ground motions is rendered ineffective for tsunami earthquakes

seismic evidence for an earthquake nucleation phase near source observations show that earthquakes initiate with a distinctive seismic nucleation phase that is characterized by a low rate of moment release relative to the rest of the event this phase was observed for the 30 earthquakes having moment magnitudes 2 6 to 8 1 and the size and duration of this phase scale with the eventual size of the earthquake during the nucleation phase moment release was irregular and appears to have been confined to a limited region of the fault it was characteristically followed by quadratic growth in the moment rate as rupture began to propagate away from the nucleation zone these observations suggest that the nucleation process exerts a strong influence on the size of the eventual earthquake

topography and tectonics of the central new madrid seismic zone results of numerical experiments using a three dimensional boundary element program we present results of a series of numerical experiments designed to test hypothetical mechanisms that drive deformation in the new madrid seismic zone experiments are constrained by subtle topography and the distribution of seismicity in the region we use a new boundary element algorithm that permits calculation of the three dimensional deformation field surface displacement fields are calculated for the new madrid zone under both far field plate tectonic scale and locally derived driving strains results demonstrate that surface displacement fields cannot distinguish between either a far field simple or pure shear strain field or one that involves a deep shear zone beneath the upper crustal faults thus neither geomorphic nor geodetic studies alone are expected to reveal the ultimate driving mechanism behind the present day deformation we have also tested hypotheses about strain accommodation within the new madrid contractional step over by including linking faults two southwest dipping and one vertical recently inferred from microearthquake data only those models with step over faults are able to predict the observed topography surface displacement fields for long term relaxed deformation predict the distribution of uplift and subsidence in the contractional step over remarkably well generation of these displacement fields appear to require slip on both the two northeast trending vertical faults and the two dipping faults in the step over region with very minor displacements occurring during the interseismic period when the northeast trending vertical faults are locked these models suggest that the gently dipping central step over fault is a reverse fault and that the steeper fault extending to the southeast of the step over acts as a normal fault over the long term

local observations of the onset of a large earthquake 28 june 1992 landers california the landers earthquake mw 7 3 of 28 june 1992 had a very emergent onset the first large amplitude arrivals are delayed by about 3 sec with respect to the origin time and are preceded by smaller scale slip other large earthquakes have been observed to have similar emergent onsets but the landers event is one of the first to be well recorded on nearby stations we used these recordings to investigate the spatial relationship between the hypocenter and the onset of the large energy release and to determine the slip function of the 3 sec nucleation process relative location of the onset of the large energy release with respect to the initial hypocenter indicates its source was between 1 and 4 km north of the hypocenter and delayed by approximately 2 5 sec three station array analysis of the p wave shows that the large amplitude onset arrives with a faster apparent velocity compared to the first arrivals indicating that the large amplitude source was several kilometers deeper than the initial onset an ml 2 8 foreshock located close to the hypocenter was used as an empirical green s function to correct for path and site effects from the first 3 sec of the mainshock seismogram the resultant deconvolution produced a slip function that showed two subevents preceding the main energy release an mw 4 4 followed by an mw 5 6 these subevents do not appear anomalous in comparison to simple moderate sized earthquakes suggesting that they were normal events which just triggered or grew into a much larger earthquake if small and moderate sized earthquakes commonly detonate much larger events this implies that the dynamic stresses during earthquake rupture are at least as important as long term static stresses in causing earthquakes and the prospects of reliable earthquake prediction from premonitory phenomena are not improved

subduction of seamounts at the java trench a view with long range sidescan sonar abstract we describe here a 1300 km by 45 km gloria long range sidescan sonar swath along the eastern java trench the swath images the trench axis a narrow strip of oceanic crust to the south and the toe of the accretionary wedge to the north between 108 and 120 e sonar images of the ocean crust show a pattern of normal faults typical of the outer wall of trenches these result from tension related to the bending of the oceanic lithosphere into the subduction zone a number of sub circular seamounts are also seen some of which are currently being subducted isolated ponds of flat lying sediments occur in the trench axis although along much of its length the trench is devoid of such sediment accumulations on the inner trench wall the accretionary wedge is recognised by its distinctive grainy texture with the grain aligned sub parallel to the deformation front where subducting seamounts are colliding with the wedge large crescentic areas of very high backscattering correlate with re entrants in the deformation front and large indentations in the wedge the high backscattering within these collision scars is interpreted to arise from outcropping strata and talus covered slopes resulting from erosion of an inner trench wall shortened and oversteepened by collision with a seamount all of the sediment ponds in the trench axis occur in close association with collision scars strongly suggesting localised erosion of the accretionary wedge in the scar areas however the volume of the indentations appears to be an order of magnitude greater than the volume of eroded sediments deposited in the trench indicating that erosion cannot be the primary mechanism by which indentations are created most of the missing material must be displaced landward by thrusting and folding ahead of the seamount our observations at the java trench are broadly comparable with those made at the japan trench by french and japanese workers however some differences in the detail of the collision process are evident in particular oversteepening and erosion occur from the earliest stage of collision at the java trench while uplift and understeepening initially dominate at the japan trench differences in the effects of subducting seamounts in the two areas are attributed to contrasts between the relatively unlithified strata of the java trench inner wall and the more lithified strata of the non accreting japan trench inner wall

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

regional pore fluid pressures in the active western taiwan thrust belt a test of the classic hubbert rubey fault weakening hypothesis abstract we document regional pore fluid pressures in the active taiwan thrust belt using 55 deep boreholes to test the classic hubbert rubey hypothesis that high static fluid pressures depth normalized as pf rgz account for the extreme weakness of thrust faults since effective friction f f 1 taiwan fluid pressures are dominated by disequilibrium compaction showing fully compacted sediments with hydrostatic fluid pressures at shallow depths until the fluid retention depth zfrd 3 km below which sediments are increasingly undercompacted and overpressured the hubbert rubey fault weakening coefficient is a simple function of depth 1 0 6zfrd z we map present day and pre erosion fluid pressures and weakening 1 regionally and show that active thrusts are too shallow relative to zfrd for the classic hubbert rubey mechanism to be important which requires z 4zfrd 12 km to have the required order of magnitude hubbert rubey fault weakening of 1 0 15 the best characterized thrust is the chelungpu fault that slipped in the 1999 mw 7 6 chi chi earthquake which has a low effective friction f 0 08 0 12 yet lies near the base of the hydrostatic zone at depths of 1 5 km with a modest hubbert rubey weakening of 1 0 4 0 6 overpressured miocene and oligocene detachments at 5 7 km depth have 1 0 3 therefore other mechanisms of fault weakening are required such as the dynamical mechanisms documented for the chi chi earthquake

the diversity of large earthquakes and its implications for hazard mitigation with the advent of broadband seismology and gps significant diversity in the source radiation spectra of large earthquakes has been clearly demonstrated this diversity requires different approaches to mitigate hazards in certain tectonic environments seismologists can forecast the future occurrence of large earthquakes within a solid scientific framework using the results from seismology and gps such forecasts are critically important for long term hazard mitigation practices but because stochastic fracture processes are complex the forecasts are inevitably subject to large uncertainty and unexpected events will continue to surprise seismologists recent developments in real time seismology will help seismologists to cope with and prepare for tsunamis and earthquakes combining a better understanding of earthquake diversity with modern technology is the key to effective and comprehensive hazard mitigation practices

earthquake source scaling relationships from 1 to 5 ml using seismograms recorded at 2 5 km depth the scaling relationships of earthquake sources less than about magnitude 3 have been the subject of considerable controversy over the last two decades studies of such events have shown a tendency for the constant stress drop self similarity of larger earthquakes to breakdown at small magnitudes and an apparent minimum source dimension of about 100 m has been observed other studies showed that this apparent breakdown in scaling could be an artifact of severe near surface attenuation limiting the spatial resolution of surface data in this study source parameters are determined for over 100 nearby tectonic earthquakes from recordings at a depth of 2 5 km in granite in the cajon pass scientific drill hole southern california comparison of the seismograms recorded at this depth with those at the wellhead clearly demonstrates the effect of the severe attenuation in the upper kilometers of the earth s crust source parameters are calculated by spectral modeling of three component p and s waves assuming four source models based on the brune 2 n 2 model in model l n 2 is fixed and q of p and s waves is determined to be 912 581 1433 and 1078 879 1323 respectively the numbers in parentheses are 1 standard deviation in model 2 qp qs 1000 is assumed and n is allowed to vary the 2 model is a good average for the data set but there is some real scatter supported by the data in model 3 qp qs 1000 is also assumed and 2 is constrained and in model 4 attenuation is ignored and n is allowed to vary source dimensions of less than 10m are observed for all four models 10 times smaller than the proposed minimum no breakdown in constant stress drop scaling is seen in the downhole data approximately ml 1 to 5 5 m0 109 1016 nm the ratio between radiated seismic energy estimated by integrating the velocity squared spectra with adequate signal bandwidth and seismic moment appears to decrease gradually with decreasing moment in the magnitude range 1 to 7 this is not incompatible with a constant stress drop but could result from errors in calculating energy the ratio of the s wave energy to that radiated by the p waves is about 14 after correction for attenuation this low value is consistent with the corner frequency shift of about 1 3 this corner frequency shift is observed for all four source models and therefore is interpreted as being source controlled

coulomb wedge model applied to the subduction of seamounts in the japan trench results from the french japanese kaiko exploration program of the japan trench and complementary data are used to propose a model of subduction of seamounts examples in two seamount chains one at the junction between the japan and kuril trenches and the other in the southern part of the japan trench off inubo cape illustrate the stages of subduction the japan trench margin evolved as a homogeneous wedge of deformable noncohesive coulomb material during seamount subduction this is illustrated by the subduction of the daiichi kashima seamount in the southern japan trench our model predicts that the first consequence of seamount subduction is a compressive thickening of the toe of the wedge above the advancing flank of the seamount because of the oversteepening of the rigid base of the wedge this agrees with our observations in the daiichi kashima area this thickening shifts landward across the wedge with the advancing flank of the seamount erosion dominates the wedge above the trailing flank of the seamount because of the corresponding understeepening of the rigid base of the wedge a reentrant of the toe of the wedge is thus created it is largest when the oceanic flank of the seamount coincides with the base of the landward slope at this time the trench axis will probably have an abnormally large amount of sediments as illustrated at the junction between the japan and kuril trenches after the subduction of the seamount the edge of the wedge should progressively move back to its initial location frontal accretion is absent or very limited

roughness characteristics of oceanic seafloor prior to subduction in relation to the seismogenic potential of subduction zones we have developed a new approach to characterize the seafloor roughness seaward of the trenches as a proxy for estimating the roughness of the subduction interface we consider that abrupt elevation changes over given wavelengths play a larger role in the seismogenic behavior of the subduction interface than the amplitude of bathymetric variations alone the new database subrough provides roughness parameters at selected spatial wavelengths here we mainly discuss the spatial distribution of short 12 20 km and long wavelength 80 100 km roughness rsw and rlw respectively along 250 km wide strips of seafloor seaward of the trenches compared with global trend seamounts show distinct roughness signature of much larger amplitudes at both wavelengths whereas aseismic ridges only differ from the global trend at long wavelengths fracture zones cannot be distinguished from the global trend which suggests that their potential effect on rupture dynamics is not the consequence of their roughness at least not at these wavelengths based on rlw amplitude segments along subduction zones can be defined from rough to smooth subduction zones like the solomons or the ryukyus appear dominantly rough whereas others like the andes or cascadia are dominantly smooth the relative contribution of smooth versus rough areas in terms of respective lateral extents probably plays a role in multipatch rupture and thus in the final earthquake magnitude we observe a clear correlation between high seismic coupling and relatively low roughness and conversely between low seismic coupling and relatively high seafloor roughness

field survey of the east java earthquake and tsunami of june 3 1994 a field survey of the june 3 1994 east java earthquake tsunami was conducted within three weeks and the distributions of the seismic intensities tsunami heights and human and house damages were surveyed the seismic intensities on the south coasts of java and bali islands were small for an earthquake with magnitude m 7 6 the earthquake caused no land damage about 40 minutes after the main shock a huge tsunami attacked the coasts several villages in east java province were damaged severely and 223 persons perished at pancer village about 70 percent of the houses were swept away and 121 persons were killed by the tsunami the relationship between tsunami heights and distances from the source shows that the hatori s tsunami magnitude was m 3 which seems to be larger for the earthquake magnitude but we should not consider this an extraordinary event because it was pointed out by hatori 1994 that the magnitudes of tsunamis in the indonesia philippine region generally exceed 1 2 grade larger than those of other regions

interpretation of earthquake epicenter and cmt centroid locations in terms of rupture length and direction abstract a comparison is made between hypocenter and centroid estimates of shallow earthquakes to investigate whether the difference between these two quantities contains useful information on fault rupture length and direction an initial comparison of international seismological centre isc and harvard centroid moment tensor cmt catalog locations suggests that for earthquakes below mw 6 5 the difference in location is dominated by location errors whilst larger earthquakes appear to show the effect of increasing spatial rupture however for this data set combined location errors greater than 25 km are observed for a majority of earthquakes imposing a limit on interpretation we use these constraints to investigate this approach using a consistent earth model in the re analysis of eight previously well studied events new hypocenter estimates based on teleseismic p wave arrivals from the isc bulletin and a 3 d velocity model of the mantle s p12 wm13 are compared with new centroid locations obtained using the same 3 d model and waveform data from international deployment of accelerometers ida global digital seismic network gdsn and re calibrated high gain long period hglp stations the distance between our new hypocenter and centroid locations is shown to provide reliable information on both the rupture length and direction the rupture lengths and azimuths generally agree with the most recent previous results from other methods and provide an absolute estimate of the location of the rupture

the effect of seamount subduction on seismic coupling it has long been speculated that the subduction of seamounts may have profound mechanical consequences particularly on the generation of large subduction zone earthquakes we consider this problem as a special case of the seismic coupling model of scholz and campos the model predicts that the subduction of a large seamount will increase the normal stress across the subduction interface and hence will enhance seismic coupling in the case of coupled arcs this increased coupling will result in a large increase in the recurrence intervals of earthquakes such events will therefore appear rare in the instrumental record as is observed for decoupled arcs the subduction of a large seamount should cause them to become locally coupled three of the latter localities have been found with satellite altimetry data two on the tonga kermadec trench and one on the izu bonin trench the diagnostic feature is a shallowing or obstruction of the trench axis adjacent to a chain or group of large seamounts on the subducting plate in each case the small to moderate plate interface seismicity typical of decoupled seismic zones is almost completely absent in a 100 200 km arc segment indicating that the subduction zone is locally locked as predicted by the model the occurrence of large interplate earthquakes at both tonga sites confirms that they are seismically coupled

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

gps determined eastward sundaland motion with respect to eurasia confirmed by earthquakes slip vectors at sunda and philippine trenches abstract gps measurements acquired over southeast asia in 1994 and 1996 in the framework of the geodyssea program revealed that a large piece of continental lithosphere comprising the indochina peninsula sunda shelf and part of indonesia behaves as a rigid sundaland platelet a direct adjustment of velocity vectors obtained in a eurasian frame of reference shows that sundaland block is rotating clockwise with respect to eurasia around a pole of rotation located south of australia we present here an additional check of sundaland motion that uses earthquakes slip vectors at sunda and philippine trenches seven sites of the geodyssea network are close to the trenches and not separated from them by large active faults two at sumatra trench three at java trench and two at the philippine trench the difference between the vector at the station and the adjacent subducting plate vector defines the relative subduction motion and should thus be aligned with the subduction earthquake slip vectors we first derive a frame free solution that minimizes the upper plate or sundaland motion when corrected for australia eurasia and philippines eurasia nuvel1 a motion the misfit between gps and slip vectors azimuths is significant at 95 confidence indicating that the upper plate does not belong to eurasia we then examine the range of solutions compatible with the slip vectors azimuths and conclude that the minimum velocity of sundaland is a uniform 7 10 mm a eastward velocity however introducing the additional constraint of the fit of the geodyssea sites with the australian igs reference ones or tie with the ntus singapore station leads to a much narrower range of solutions we conclude that sundaland has an eastward velocity of about 10 mm a on its southern boundary increasing to 16 18 mm a on its northern boundary

improving teleseismic event locations using a three dimensional earth model abstract a comparison is made between seismic event locations derived from standard spherically symmetric earth models jb prem iasp91 and a recent earth model sp and a published data set of 82 well located earthquakes with a more even global distribution iasp91 and prem are shown to offer similar errors in event location and origin time estimates with respect to the jb model the three dimensional 3d model sp for the earthquakes the improvements are smaller corrections for crustal thickness beneath source and receiver are found to be of similar magnitude to the mantle corrections but use of station corrections together with the three dimensional mantle model provide the best locations

anatomy of a megathrust the 2010 m8 8 maule chile earthquake rupture zone imaged using seismic tomography abstract knowledge of seismic velocities in the seismogenic part of subduction zones can reveal how material properties may influence large ruptures observations of aftershocks that followed the 2010 m w 8 8 maule chile earthquake provide an exceptional dataset to examine the physical properties of a megathrust rupture zone we manually analysed aftershocks from onshore seismic stations and ocean bottom seismometers to derive a 3 d velocity model of the rupture zone using local earthquake tomography from the trench to the magmatic arc our velocity model illuminates the main features within the subduction zone we interpret an east dipping high p wave velocity anomaly 6 9 km s as the subducting oceanic crust and a low p wave velocity we assess the role played by physical heterogeneity in governing megathrust behaviour greatest slip during the maule earthquake occurred in areas of moderate p wave velocity 6 5 7 5 km s where the interface is structurally more uniform at shallow depths high fluid pressure likely influenced the up dip limit of seismic activity the high velocity bodies lie above portions of the plate interface where there was reduced coseismic slip and minimal postseismic activity the northern velocity anomaly may have acted as a structural discontinuity within the forearc influencing the pronounced crustal seismicity in the pichilemu region our work provides evidence for how the ancient geological structure of the forearc may influence the seismic behaviour of subduction megathrusts

global patterns of radiated seismic energy and apparent stress radiated energies from shallow earthquakes with magnitudes 5 8 that occurred between 1986 and 1991 are used to examine global patterns of energy release and apparent stress in contrast to traditional methods which have relied upon empirical formulas these energies are computed through direct spectral analysis of broadband seismic waveforms velocity squared spectra of body waves are integrated after they have been corrected for effects arising from depth phases frequency dependent attenuation and focal mechanism the least squares regression fit of energy es to surface wave magnitude ms for a global set of 397 earthquakes yields log es 4 4 1 5ms which implies that the gutenberg richter relationship overestimates the energies of earthquakes the least squares fit between es and seismic moment m0 is given by the relationship es 1 6 10 5 m0 which yields 0 47 mpa as the average global value of apparent stress however the regression lines of both es ms and es m0 yield poor empirical predictors for the actual energy radiated by any given earthquake the scatter of data is more than an order of magnitude about each of the regression lines on the other hand global variations between es and mo while large are not random when subsets of es m0 are plotted as a function of seismic region and faulting type the scatter in data is substantially reduced the es m0 fits for many seismic regions and tectonic environments are very distinctive and a characteristic apparent stress c can be derived the lowest apparent stresses 3 0 mpa are associated with strike slip earthquakes that occur at oceanic ridge ridge transforms and in intraplate environments seaward of island arcs intermediate values of apparent stress 1 5 a 3 0 mpa are associated with strike slip earthquakes at incipient or transitional plate boundaries in general the dominant mode of failure for a tectonic environment is associated with the faulting type that has the lowest apparent stress an energy magnitude me can complement moment magnitude mw in describing the size of an earthquake me being derived from velocity power spectra is a measure of seismic potential for damage mw being derived from the low frequency asymptote of displacement spectra is more physically related to the final static displacement of an earthquake when earthquake size is ranked by moment a list of the largest events is dominated by earthquakes with thrust mechanisms when earthquake size is ranked by energy the list of the largest events is dominated by strike slip earthquakes

broadband source spectrum seismic energy and stress drop of the 1989 macquarie ridge earthquake i compute the broadband source spectrum at periods from 1 to 50 seconds using teleseismic p body waves of the may 23 1989 macquarie ridge earthquake mw 8 1 recorded by the gdsn geoscope and ida networks the average source spectrum is obtained by windowing tapering and fourier transforming p waves removing from the spectra the effects of attenuation geometrical spreading and radiation pattern and averaging logarithmically over the stations the source spectrum for the strike slip macquarie ridge earthquake is higher than an average source spectrum of seven recent large earthquakes scaled to be comparable to a mw 8 1 earthquake by a factor of 2 to 3 at periods of 1 to 20 seconds these other earthquakes were underthrusting events in subduction zones using haskell s formulation assuming a point source with no directivity i estimate the seismically radiated energy from the source spectrum by integrating the square of the source spectrum in velocity and scaling the result the seismic energy thus estimated for the macquarie ridge earthquake is 3 to 8 1023 ergs an orowan stress drop can be obtained from the seismic energy and moment the orowan stress drop for the macquarie ridge earthquake is about 20 to 50 bars much higher than similarly determined stress drops of other recent large earthquakes there is a correlation between the orowan stress drops and time since the last earthquake of comparable or larger magnitude for seven recent large earthquakes this correlation suggests that a healing process operates that may control the mechanical strength of the fault and is important on time scales of tens to hundreds of years

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

compound rupture of the great 1998 antarctic plate earthquake the march 25 1998 antarctic plate earthquake ruptured a portion of the antarctic plate more than 200 km west of its boundary with the australian plate the harvard centroid moment tensor solution indicates that the earthquake was primarily a strike slip event but the large non double couple component of the moment tensor suggests considerable complexity in the rupture process we use a finite fault inversion method to determine details of the rupture process from teleseismic body waves recorded by the global seismic network the p waves are poorly fit by one or more subevents having only a strike slip mechanism we find that the presence of a large oblique normal faulting subevent located to the east of the hypocenter is necessary to improve the fit this subevent combines with a larger strike slip subevent to the west to comprise the main moment release in the earthquake and is the cause of the large non double couple component in the long period focal mechanism the earthquake exhibited very high slip and high stress drop compared with most interplate strike slip events and the rupture was largely confined to the upper 15 20 km of the lithosphere both constituent focal mechanisms indicate that this part of the antarctic plate is under nw se oriented tension although the origin of these stresses is unknown

shallow subduction zone earthquakes and their tsunamigenic potential summary we have examined the source spectra of all shallow subduction zone earthquakes from 1992 to 1996 with moment magnitude 7 0 or greater as well as some other interesting events in the period range 1 20 s by computing moment rate functions of teleseismic p waves after comparing the source spectral characteristics of tsunami earthquakes earthquakes that are followed by tsunamis greater than would be expected from their moment magnitude with regular events we identified a subclass of this group slow tsunami earthquakes this subclass consists of the 1992 nicaragua the 1994 java and the february 1996 peru earthquakes we found that these events have an anomalously low energy release in the 1 20 s frequency band with respect to their moment magnitude although their spectral drop ov is comparable to those of the other earthquakes from an investigation of the centroid and body wave locations it appears that most earthquakes in this study conformed to a simple model in which the earthquake nucleates in a zone of compacted and dehydrated sediments and ruptures up dip until the stable sliding friction regime of unconsolidated sediments stops the propagation sedimentstarved trenches e g near jalisco can produce very shallow slip because the fault material supports unstable sliding the slow tsunami earthquakes also ruptured up dip however their centroid is located unusually close to the trench axis the subduction zones in which these events occurred all have a small accretionary prism and a thin layer of subducting sediment ocean surveys show that in these regions the ocean floor close to the trench is highly faulted we suggest that the horst and graben structure of a rough subducting oceanic plate will cause contact zones with the overriding plate making shallow earthquake nucleation and up dip propagation to the ocean floor possible the rupture partly propagates in sediments making the earthquake source process slow two factors have to be considered in the high tsunami generating potential of these events first the slip propagates to shallow depths in low rigidity material causing great deformation and displacement of a large volume of water second the measured seismic moment may not represent the true earthquake displacement because the elastic constants of the source region are not taken into account in the standard cmt determination

analysis of the far field tsunamis generated by the 1998 papua new guinea earthquake the tsunami generated by the 1998 papua new guinea earthquake was observed at several tide gauges and ocean bottom pressure gauges in japan the fault model of the 1998 papua new guinea earthquake was estimated using those tsunami waveforms observed in japan and coseismic subsidence observed along the coast of papua new guinea near the source region the numerical simulation of the tsunami using the linear boussinesq equation was carried out the tsunami waveforms in japan are explained by the fault model which is consistent with the harvard cmt solution including the seismic moment of 3 7 1019 nm the additional tsunami source such as a sediment slump is not needed to explain the observed tsunami in japan the mechanism of the earthquake was likely to be a steeply dipping reverse fault the 1998 papua new guinea earthquake was likely to occur within a small accretionary prism near the new guinea trench

an experiment in systematic study of global seismicity centroid moment tensor solutions for 201 moderate and large earthquakes of 1981 data from the global digital seismograph network were used to obtain centroid moment tensor solutions using the method of dziewonski et al 1981 results were obtained for 201 earthquakes ranging in seismic moment from 7 1023 to 3 1027 dyne cm the wide dynamic range of the sro asro stations allows us to investigate using the same algorithm series of events among which the smallest and the largest may differ in moment by a factor as large as 1000 among the events studied is a particularly interesting series in january 1981 off the island of honshu the main shock was preceded by three foreshocks and followed by four aftershocks all falling within the range of our analysis there is an indication that the source mechanism changes with the size of the event statistical analysis of the results for all earthquakes reveals that the half duration of shallow and intermediate events is approximated by 1 6 10 8 m01 3 the shifts in origin time for deep focus earthquakes are indicative of the general complexity of these events which depends only weakly on the seismic moment the extreme departures from a double couple mechanism seem to depend both on the moment and on the focal depth while for shallow earthquakes these departures decrease from a maximum at about 1025 dyne cm with increasing moment the reverse appears to be true with respect to deep focus earthquakes shallow earthquakes north of new guinea and along the solomon islands show systematic and substantial departures from the double couple mechanism

monte carlo slip inversion in the frequency domain application to the 1992 nicaragua slow earthquake the spatio temporal complexity of moment release of the 1992 nicaragua slow earthquake mw 7 7 is estimated by simulated annealing contrary to linearized inversions monte carlo techniques do not make assumptions about a priori features of the model in particular large variations in rupture velocities can be imaged relative spectra between the main shock and an empirical green s function were obtained from 4 44 mhz using first and second orbit fundamental mode rayleigh waves the spectra were inverted for the moment distribution on a 2d horizontal fault under the physical constraints of slip positivity and causality the non linear inversion revealed two main regions of slip one centered 20 km to the nw of the epicenter the other 160 km to the se but delayed by 70 s rupture velocities in the slipping patches were found to be low around 1 km s large amount of slip occurred trench ward of the epicenter accounting for the large tsunami excitation analysis of the slip distribution suggests that the slow and smooth nature of the 1992 nicaragua event may be related to the frictional properties at the plate interface

inversion of strong ground motion and teleseismic waveform data for the fault rupture history of the 1979 imperial valley california earthquake a least squares point by point inversion of strong ground motion and teleseismic body waves is used to infer the fault rupture history of the 1979 imperial valley california earthquake the imperial fault is represented by a plane embedded in a half space where the elastic properties vary with depth the inversion yields both the spatial and temporal variations in dislocation on the fault plane for both right lateral strike slip and normal dip slip components of motion inversions are run for different fault dips and for both constant and variable rupture velocity models effects of different data sets are also investigated inversions are compared which use the strong ground motions alone the teleseismic body waves alone and simultaneously the strong ground motion and teleseismic records the inversions are stabilized by adding both smoothing and positivity constraints the moment is estimated to be 5 0 10 25 dyne cm and the fault dip 90 5 dislocation in the hypocentral region south of the united states mexican border is relatively small and almost dies out near the border dislocation then increases sharply north of the border to a maximum of about 2 m under interstate 8 dipslip motion is minor compared to strike slip motion and is concentrated in the sediments the best fitting constant rupture velocity is 80 per cent of the local shear wave velocity however there is a suggestion that the rupture front accelerated from the hypocenter northward the 1979 imperial valley earthquake can be characterized as a magnitude 5 earthquake at the hypocenter which then grew into or triggered a magnitude 6 earthquake north of the border

tsunami generation by horizontal displacement of ocean bottom tsunami generation by an earthquake is generally modeled by water surface displacement identical to the vertical deformation of ocean bottom due to faulting the effect of horizontal deformation is usually neglected however when the tsunami source is on a steep slope and the horizontal displacement is large relative to the vertical displacement the effect becomes significant we show this for two recent earthquakes which generated much larger tsunamis than expected from seismic waves in the case of the 1994 june 2 java indonesia earthquake the focal mechanism was a very shallow dipping thrust and the source was near a very steep trench slope in the case of the 1994 nov 14 mindoro philippines earthquake strike slip faulting extended from ocean to land perpendicular to the coast line in both cases we found that the horizontal motion of slope had an important contribution to the tsunami generation

mechanism of the 1992 nicaragua tsunami earthquake the 1992 nicaragua earthquake generated larger tsunamis than expected from its surface wave magnitude ms 7 2 and is known as a tsunami earthquake seismological studies showed that the duration was very long for its size about 100 s other studies have shown that the seismic moment estimated from tsunamis is an order of magnitude larger than that from seismic waves even after the long duration is accounted for numerical computations of tsunamis from various fault models are made to reconcile this discrepancy comparison of calculated waveforms with tide gauge records shows that the fault width is 40 km much narrower than the aftershock area and extends only into the upper 10 km of the ocean bottom slip amount on the fault is estimated to be 3 m from amplitude comparisons the fault length is estimated to be 250 km slightly longer than the aftershock area from comparison of the tsunami height distribution the rigidity around the shallow fault may be smaller than that of a standard underthrust fault and the seismic moment is estimated as 3 1020 nm consistent with the seismic observations a slow rupture on the shallow fault presumably in the subducted sediments is responsible to the unusually large tsunami excitation