Mineral assemblage anomalies in the slip zone of the 1999 Taiwan Chi-Chi earthquake: Ultrafine particles preserved only in the latest slip zone

Abstract

We determined mineral assemblages of samples from the Taiwan Chelungpu fault and from milling and heating experiments by using X-ray diffraction and scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The fault system contains three dominant fault zones, the shallowest of which slipped during the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake. The quartz and clay mineral contents of the primary slip zone were low, and it contained partly amorphous ultrafine particles (several tens of nanometers). Up to 30 weight percent of materials in that zone could not be fit to standard diffraction patterns, whereas nearly 100 weight percent of those in surrounding samples could be. The unfitted component could be attributed to the observed ultrafine particles produced by comminution during the earthquake, because weak diffraction intensities are caused from mineral lattice distortion, granulation, and amorphous coatings. Such particles are a potential proxy for identifying the slip zone of the most recent earthquake along a fault.