Enhancement of interplate coupling in adjacent segments after recent megathrust earthquakes

Abstract

Landward increase of surface velocity has been found for segments adjacent along-strike to megathrust faults after the 2003 Tokachi-oki and the 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquakes, NE Japan. A similar increase of landward velocities was reported for the segments to the north of the rupture of the 2010 Maule earthquake, Chile. We utilize available GNSS data to find such changes for six megathrust earthquakes in four subduction zones, including NE Japan, central and northern Chile, Sumatra, and Mexico to investigate their common features. Our study showed that such increase, ranging from a few mm/yr to ~1 cm/yr, appeared in adjacent segments following the 2014 Iquique (Chile), the 2007 Bengkulu (Sumatra), and the 2012 Oaxaca (Mexico) earthquakes in addition to the three cases. The region of the increased landward movements extends with spatial decay and reach the distance comparable to the along-strike fault length. On the other hand, the temporal decay of the increased velocity is not clear at present. The degree of increase seems to depend on the earthquake magnitude, and possibly scales with the average fault slip in the earthquake. This is consistent with the simple two-dimensional model proposed earlier to attribute the phenomenon to the enhanced coupling caused by accelerated subduction. However, these data are not strong enough to rule out other possibilities.