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Earthquake supercycle in subduction zones controlled by the width of the seismogenic zone

Abstract

A supercycle describes a long-term cluster of differently-sized megathrust earthquakes, leading up to the final complete failure of a subduction zone segment1,2. The precise controls on supercycles are unclear, although structural and frictional heterogeneities are proposed1. We recognize that supercycles are suggested to occur in those regions1,2,3,4 where the estimated downdip width of the seismogenic zone5,6,7 is larger than average. Here we investigate the link between supercycles and the seismogenic zone downdip width using a two-dimensional numerical model8. In our simulations, the first megathrust earthquakes in a supercycle generally rupture only the outermost parts of the seismogenic zone. These partial ruptures are stopped owing to a large excess of strength over stress, and transfer stresses towards the centre of the seismogenic zone. In addition to the continued tectonic loading, they thereby gradually reduce the strength excess so that the largest megathrust events finally rupture the entire seismogenic zone and release most of the accumulated stress. A greater width increases the average strength excess and thus favours supercycles over ordinary cycles of only similarly sized complete ruptures. Our results imply that larger than thus far observed earthquakes could conclude a supercycle where seismogenic zone widths are larger than average.

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Figure 1: Downdip width of seismogenic zones and proposed supercycles.
Figure 2: Long-term and short-term characteristics of wide (LW) and narrow (SW) downdip width reference models.
Figure 3: Rupture styles in wide downdip width reference model (LW).
Figure 4: Impact of the downdip seismogenic zone width and depth.

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Acknowledgements

We thank F. Corbi and F. Funiciello for comments that have helped improve the manuscript. We thank A-A. Gabriel and H. Tobin for discussions. We are grateful to A. Heuret for providing us with a GMT script to plot Fig. 1. Numerical simulations were performed on ETH cluster Brutus. R.H. was supported by the SNSF grant 200021-153524, Y.v.D. and T.G. by an ERC-ITN grant ZIP.

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All authors contributed in the design of the study. R.H. carried out, analysed and interpreted the numerical experiments, and conducted literature research. Y.v.D., T.G. and L.A.D. supervised this work. R.H. wrote the manuscript together with contributions from Y.v.D., T.G. and L.A.D. reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Robert Herrendörfer.

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Herrendörfer, R., van Dinther, Y., Gerya, T. et al. Earthquake supercycle in subduction zones controlled by the width of the seismogenic zone. Nature Geosci 8, 471–474 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2427

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