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Variations in earthquake rupture properties along the Gofar transform fault, East Pacific Rise

Nature Geoscience volume 5, pages 336–341 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

On a global scale, seismicity on oceanic transform faults that link mid-ocean ridge segments is thermally controlled1,2. However, temperature cannot be the only control because the largest earthquakes on oceanic transform faults rupture only a small fraction of the area that thermal models predict to be capable of rupture3,4,5. Instead, most slip occurs without producing large earthquakes3,4,6. When large earthquakes do occur, they often repeat quasiperiodically7,8. Moreover, oceanic transform faults produce an order of magnitude more foreshocks than continental strike-slip faults7,9. Here we analyse a swarm of about 20,000 foreshocks, recorded on an array of ocean-bottom seismometers, which occurred before a magnitude 6.0 earthquake on the Gofar transform fault, East Pacific Rise. We find that the week-long foreshock sequence was confined to a 10-km-long region that subsequently acted as a barrier to rupture during the mainshock. The foreshock zone is associated with a high porosity and undergoes a 3% decrease in average shear-wave speed during the week preceding the mainshock. We conclude that the material properties of fault segments capable of rupturing in large earthquakes differ from those of barrier regions, possibly as a result of enhanced fluid circulation within the latter. We suggest that along-strike variations in fault zone material properties can help explain the abundance of foreshocks and the relative lack of large earthquakes that occur on mid-ocean ridge transform faults.

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Figure 1: Earthquake epicentres at the Gofar transform fault.
Figure 2: Earthquake temporal distribution.
Figure 3: Along-strike variations in earthquake depths.
Figure 4: Temporal velocity changes.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the W. M. Keck Foundation for the financial support to build the OBSs that carried strong-motion accelerometers and made this study possible. We thank the crews of the RVs Thomas G. Thompson, Marcus Langseth and Atlantis for three nearly flawless cruises needed to collect this data set. We thank the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Bottom Seismic Instrumentation Pool group, K. Peal, R. Handy, A. Gardner, D. Dubois, D. Kot, P. Lemmond and J. Ryder, for collecting such an amazing data set. This work was done with the support of the National Science Foundation grant OCE-0242117. P.G. is supported by a Shell research grant.

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  1. Emily Roland

    Present address: Present address: US Geological Survey, Anchorage, Alaska 99508, USA,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA

    Jeffrey J. McGuire, John A. Collins, Dan Lizarralde & Mark D. Behn

  2. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

    Pierre Gouédard & Robert D. van der Hilst

  3. MIT-WHOI Joint Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

    Emily Roland

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire 03824, USA

    Margaret S. Boettcher

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Contributions

J.J.M. and J.A.C. conceived the OBS experiment. J.J.M., J.A.C., M.S.B. and E.R. participated in the three research cruises and associated data collection. J.J.M. and J.A.C. derived the earthquake catalogue. P.G. and R.D.v.d.H. carried out the velocity-change analysis. E.R. and D.L. determined the seismic velocity model used for relocations. E.R. and M.D.B. carried out the thermal modelling. All authors discussed results and contributed to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jeffrey J. McGuire.

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McGuire, J., Collins, J., Gouédard, P. et al. Variations in earthquake rupture properties along the Gofar transform fault, East Pacific Rise. Nature Geosci 5, 336–341 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1454

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