Coseismic Coulomb stress changes induced by a 2020–2021 MW > 7.0 Alaska earthquake sequence in and around the Shumagin gap and its influence on the Alaska-Aleutian subduction interface

Abstract

Three MW > 7.0 earthquakes in 2020–2021 occurred in the Shumagin seismic gap and its adjacent area of the Alaska-Aleutian subduction zone, including the MW7.8 Simeonof thrust earthquake on July 22, 2020, the MW7.6 Sand Point strike-slip earthquake on October 19, 2020, and the MW8.2 Chignik thrust earthquake on July 29, 2021. The spatial and temporal proximity of these three earthquakes prompts us to probe stress-triggering effects among them. Here we examine the coseismic Coulomb stress change imparted by the three earthquakes and their influence on the subduction interface. Our results show that: (1) The Simeonof earthquake has strong loading effects on the subsequent Sand Point and Chignik earthquakes, with the Coulomb stress changes of 3.95 bars and 2.89 bars, respectively. The Coulomb stress change caused by the Sand Point earthquake at the hypocenter of the Chignik earthquake is merely around 0.01 bars, suggesting the negligible triggering effect on the latter earthquake; (2) The triggering effects of the Simeonof, Sand Point, and Chignik earthquakes on aftershocks within three months are not well pronounced because of the triggering rates of 38%, 14%, and 43% respectively. Other factors may have played an important role in promoting the occurrence of these aftershocks, such as the roughness of the subduction interface, the complicated velocity structure of the lithosphere, and the heterogeneous prestress therein; (3) The three earthquakes caused remarkable coseismic Coulomb stress changes at the subduction interface nearby these mainshocks, with an average Coulomb stress change of 3.2 bars in the shallow region directly inwards the trench.