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Permanent deformation caused by subduction earthquakes in northern Chile

Abstract

Earthquakes are accompanied by coseismic and post-seismic rebound: blocks of crust on either side of the fault spring back to their initial, undeformed configuration. This rebound is well documented by space geodetic data, such as the Global Positioning System. Thus, all earthquake-induced deformation of the crust is considered non-permanent and is modelled as an elastic or visco-elastic process. Here, however, we show that earthquakes larger than magnitude 7 in northern Chile caused the crust to deform permanently. We identify millimetre- to metre-scale tension cracks in the crust of the Atacama Desert and use cosmogenic nuclides to date the timing of crack formation. The cracks were formed by between 2,000 and 9,000 individual plate-boundary earthquakes that occurred in the past 0.8–1 million years. We show that up to 10% of the horizontal deformation generated during the earthquakes, recorded by Global Positioning System data and previously assumed to be recoverable, is permanent. Our data set provides a record of permanent strain in the shallow crust of the South American Plate. Although deformation of the deep crust may be predominantly elastic, we conclude that modelling of the earthquake cycle should also include a significant plastic component.

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Figure 1: Location of the study area, Punta de Lobos, in northern Chile.
Figure 2: Surface cracks at Punta de Lobos.
Figure 3: Strain rate due to surface cracks at Punta de Lobos.
Figure 4: Co/post-seismic GPS data for the 2010 Maule earthquake.
Figure 5: Strain magnitude from cracks and co/post-seismic GPS data.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EAR-0738507. We are grateful to G. González, M. Pritchard, J. Loveless and F. Aron for long-term collaboration and discussion of the ideas presented here. Many thanks to M. Caffee and staff at PRIME Laboratory, Purdue University for making the AMS measurements for 10Be and 26Al.

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The field research and geochemical analyses described here were performed by A.B., with further field observations and consultation by R.W.A., L.A.O. and J.A.R. Samples were processed in L.A.O.’s laboratory and data and error analyses were reviewed and calculated by L.A.O., R.W.A. and A.B. Analyses of geodetic and crack strain were performed by R.W.A. The manuscript was written by R.W.A. based in part on text provided by A.B., and was edited by L.A.O. and J.A.R.

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Correspondence to R. W. Allmendinger.

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Baker, A., Allmendinger, R., Owen, L. et al. Permanent deformation caused by subduction earthquakes in northern Chile. Nature Geosci 6, 492–496 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1789

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