Analysis of the Petatlan aftershocks: Numbers, energy release, and asperities

Abstract

The Petatlan earthquake of March 14, 1979 (Ms = 7.6), occurred between the Middle America trench and the Mexican coast, 15 km southwest of Petatlan, Guerrero, Mexico. From seismograms recorded on smoked paper, FM, and digital tapes, we have identified 255 aftershocks with coda lengths greater than 60 s that occurred 11 hours to 36 days after the main shock. Based on these events, the aftershock epicentral area defined during the period between 11 and 60 hours was about 2000 km2; between 11 hours and 6 days it was about 2400 km2. Although the area grew to 6060 km2 in 36 days, most of the activity was still confined within the area defined after 6 days. This suggests that the smaller aftershock area might represent an asperity. The distribution of events and energy release per unit area confirm the existence of heterogeneity in the aftershock area. Thus our data support the concept of an inhomogeneous rupture area that includes an asperity, as suggested by Chael and Stewart (1982) to account for the differences they computed for the body and surface wave moments from WWSSN data. However, the combination of the moments Reichle et al. (1982) report for body and surface waves from IDA data and the rupture areas reported in this paper results in a solution that is most physically realizable in terms of stress drop and slip. We calculate stress drops of 5 and 15 bars, the former for the average over the entire area, the latter for the asperity, and an average slip of 60 cm for the entire area and 120 cm for the asperity. These values for slip are 30% and 60%, respectively, of the convergence of the Cocos plate relative to the North America plate during the 36‐year period between the last two major earthquakes in the Petatlan area. Hypocenters of the aftershocks define a zone about 25 km thick, dipping 15° with an azimuth of N20°E, which is perpendicular to the Middle America trench. Most aftershocks are below the main shock. The b value estimated for aftershocks in the range 3.0 ≤ MCL ≤ 4.5 is 60% higher than one determined similarly by Hsu (1981) for the foreshocks.