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Striations, duration, migration and tidal response in deep tremor

Nature volume 466, pages 356–359 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Deep tremor in subduction zones is thought to be caused by small repeating shear slip events on the plate interface with significant slow components1,2,3,4. It occurs at a depth of about 30 kilometres and provides valuable information on deep plate motion and shallow stress accumulation on the fault plane of megathrust earthquakes. Tremor has been suggested to repeat at a regular interval1,2, migrate at various velocities4,5,6,7 and be modulated by tidal stress6,8,9. Here I show that some time-invariant interface property controls tremor behaviour, using precise location of tremor sources with event duration in western Shikoku in the Nankai subduction zone, Japan. In areas where tremor duration is short, tremor is more strongly affected by tidal stress and migration is inhibited. Where tremor lasts longer, diffusive migration occurs with a constant diffusivity of 104 m2 s−1. The control property may be the ratio of brittle to ductile areas, perhaps determined by the influence of mantle wedge serpentinization on the plate interface. The spatial variation of the controlling property seems to be characterized by striations in tremor source distribution, which follows either the current or previous plate subduction directions. This suggests that the striations and corresponding interface properties are formed through the subduction of inhomogeneous structure, such as seamounts, for periods as long as ten million years.

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Figure 1: Distribution of tremor sources having durations longer than 10 s.
Figure 2: Distribution of low-frequency earthquakes and tremor sources with duration and sensitivity to the tidal stress.
Figure 3: Map views and space-time plots of tremor sources for active periods of one week.
Figure 4: Schematic illustration of plate subduction and formation of tremor zone.

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Acknowledgements

I thank G. C. Beroza for many useful comments. Comments from K. Wang and discussions with S. Yoshioka, T. Hori, B. Shibazaki, R. Ando and A. Namiki were helpful. This work is supported by JSPS KAKENHI (20340115) and MEXT KAKENHI (21107007). The figures were prepared using the Generic Mapping Tool (P. Wessel and W. H. F. Smith, 1998).

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  1. Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of Tokyo, Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan,

    Satoshi Ide

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Correspondence to Satoshi Ide.

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Ide, S. Striations, duration, migration and tidal response in deep tremor. Nature 466, 356–359 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09251

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