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Stress transfer between thirteen successive dyke intrusions in Ethiopia

Nature Geoscience volume 3, pages 713–717 (2010)Cite this article

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An Erratum to this article was published on 01 October 2010

This article has been updated

Abstract

Stress transfer from a large earthquake may trigger subsequent earthquakes in nearby regions1,2,3. Such a mechanism has been suggested for a few isolated cases of magmatic intrusions and eruptions4,5,6, but has not been systematically demonstrated. An ongoing rifting episode, which began in 2005, along the Nubia–Arabia plate boundary provides a unique opportunity to test any such linkage. The intrusion of a 60-km-long magmatic dyke marked the beginning of the episode7,8,9,10,11,12 and, between June 2006 and July 2009, 12 more dykes were emplaced13. Here we use geodetic surveys and simple dislocation models to locate and quantify the extension that occurred during each event. We identify regions where tensile stress was increased (unclamped) by the previous dyke intrusions. Of the 12 events that followed the initial intrusion, nine dykes were observed to have at least half of their opening in regions unclamped by the previous events. We propose that the transfer of stress links the 13 dyke intrusion events. We suggest that the stress change that is induced by a new dyke is an important factor in determining the location of future events and could help improve volcanic hazard analysis.

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Figure 1: Model geometry used for this study and colour shaded relief map of northern Afar and the study area.
Figure 2: Distributed opening models and stress change calculated for each of the dyke intrusions between September 2005 and June 2009.
Figure 3: Cumulative probability histograms calculated for each of the dyke intrusions between June 2006 and July 2009, showing the likelihood of each dyke exceeding a given percentage of opening in regions where tensile stresses were increased by the previous dyke.

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Change history

  • 01 October 2010

    In the version of this Letter originally published, the positions of several of the outlines of dyke openings in Figure 2 were incorrect. These errors have now been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the text.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Geophysical Observatory of Addis Ababa University, the Afar Regional government and the Ethiopian Ministries of Capacity Building, and of Mines and Energy for their help and support. Thanks to J. Cann, G. Houseman, J. Neuberg and R. Buck for discussions and to C. Ebinger for help with GPS data acquisition and funding support. Our work is supported by NERC grants NE/D008611/1, NE/D01039X/1 and NE/E007414/1, NSF grants EAR-0635789 and EAR-0613651, a NERC-COMET studentship to I.J.H., an Exxon-Mobil fellowship to L.B. and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to T.J.W. Radar data is from the European Space Agency under project C1P-3435.

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Author notes

  1. Ian J. Hamling

    Present address: Present address: Earth System Physics, ICTP (UNESCO-IAEA), Strada Costiera 11, 34151 Trieste, Italy,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

    Ian J. Hamling & Tim J. Wright

  2. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Purdue University, Indiana 47907-1397, USA

    Eric Calais & Laura Bennati

  3. Institute of Geophysics Space Science and Astronomy, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, P.O. Box 1176, Ethiopia

    Elias Lewi

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Contributions

I.J.H. and T.J.W. planned and processed the InSAR data. E.C., L.B. and E.L. collected and processed GPS data. I.J.H. carried out the elastic modelling and wrote the paper with contributions from all the co-authors.

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Correspondence to Ian J. Hamling.

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Hamling, I., Wright, T., Calais, E. et al. Stress transfer between thirteen successive dyke intrusions in Ethiopia. Nature Geosci 3, 713–717 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo967

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