Seismology articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Article |

    The Philippine Sea/Pacific boundary megathrust is another possible source of seismic hazard in the Tokyo Region and tsunamis in the Pacific, according to an assessment of 1,000 years of tsunami deposits along the Japanese coastline.

    • Jessica E. Pilarczyk
    • , Yuki Sawai
    •  & Christopher H. Vane

  • Article |

    Frequent and dispersed small earthquakes may contribute substantially to uplift of subduction margins, according to an analysis of such seismicity in the Peru–Chile and Japan margins.

    • Andrea Madella
    •  & Todd A. Ehlers

  • Article |

    Indo-African mantle upwellings are arranged in a tree-like structure, which might reflect linear staggered detachment of proto-plumes from the lowermost mantle, according to seismic tomographic imaging.

    • Maria Tsekhmistrenko
    • , Karin Sigloch
    •  & Guilhem Barruol

  • Article |

    The inner core underwent preferential equatorial growth and translation after nucleation ~0.5–1.5 billion years ago, according to an analysis of its seismic anisotropy and self-consistent geodynamic simulations.

    • Daniel A. Frost
    • , Marine Lasbleis
    •  & Barbara Romanowicz

  • Article |

    Transformation kinetics of olivine may be a cause of deep-focus earthquakes even in wet slabs, according to water-partitioning experiments, which show that olivine remains relatively dry even under wet subducting slab conditions.

    • Takayuki Ishii
    •  & Eiji Ohtani

  • Article |

    Viscous deformation is a potentially prevalent mechanism of fault lubrication during earthquakes, according to laboratory experiments that simulate seismic faulting of various rock-forming minerals.

    • Giacomo Pozzi
    • , Nicola De Paola
    •  & Sylvie Demouchy

  • Editorial |

    Plate boundary faults in subduction zones can generate large earthquakes and tsunamis. Recent studies have revealed that these faults slip in various ways and may be influenced by many factors. Better understanding them should improve hazard assessments.

  • News & Views |

    Corals reveal that part of the plate-boundary fault near Sumatra slipped slowly and quietly for three decades before a large earthquake in 1861. The exceptional duration of this slip event has implications for interpreting deformation to assess seismic hazard.

    • Daniel Melnick

  • Article |

    Shallow parts of megathrusts up-dip of locked patches generally have a high slip rate deficit, which could mean tsunami hazard has been underestimated, according to a stress-constrained inversion of geodetic data.

    • Eric O. Lindsey
    • , Rishav Mallick
    •  & Emma M. Hill

  • Article |

    A 32-year-long slow-slip event occurred on a shallow part of the Sunda megathrust, perhaps because of stress accumulation after fluid expulsion, according to an analysis of the deformation history of the area and physics-based simulations.

    • Rishav Mallick
    • , Aron J. Meltzner
    •  & Emma M. Hill

  • Article |

    Mantle heterogeneity beneath subducting plates may influence giant megathrust earthquakes, according to seismic tomography of the subslab structure beneath six megathrusts that have ruptured in M ≥ 9.0 earthquakes.

    • Jianke Fan
    •  & Dapeng Zhao

  • Editorial |

    Interacting geological processes can cause complex hazard cascades that threaten life and property. Past events are instructive, but physical understanding must be paired with effective communication to minimize the risks posed by these events.

  • Article |

    The lower oceanic crust beneath Iceland is flowing and internally deforming, according to constraints on seismic anisotropy in the Icelandic crust from an analysis of seismic surface waves.

    • Omry Volk
    • , Robert S. White
    •  & Nicholas Rawlinson

  • News & Views |

    Turbidites record ground motion in the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. Recent events are now revealing how turbidites record earthquakes, but turbidites are triggered in many ways, and testing if ancient turbidites are earthquake-triggered remains challenging.

    • Peter J. Talling

  • Article |

    Two seismic discontinuities in the mantle transition zone beneath the western Pacific represent subducted slab interfaces that could be the slab Moho and partially molten sub-slab asthenosphere, according to an analysis of seismic data.

    • Xin Wang
    • , Qi-Fu Chen
    •  & Lijun Liu

  • Article |

    Long fault ruptures that have both strike-slip and dip-slip components can propagate at a wide range of speeds, including those theoretically predicted to be unstable, according to numerical simulations.

    • Huihui Weng
    •  & Jean-Paul Ampuero

  • News & Views |

    Permanent surface deformation caused by the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes has been directly measured, constraining the mechanics of surface damage in earthquakes.

    • Wanpeng Feng
    •  & Rafael V. Almeida

  • News & Views |

    The morphology and geometry of the plate interface in a subduction zone is heterogeneous and influenced by lower-plate normal faulting, suggests an analysis of seismic data. These properties of subduction interfaces may influence how the largest earthquakes occur.

    • Matt J. Ikari

  • Article |

    Geometric and rheological complexities may control the mechanical behaviour of megathrusts, according to an analysis of the heterogeneity in roughness and rock properties of the Middle America megathrust from 3D seismic reflection data.

    • James D. Kirkpatrick
    • , Joel H. Edwards
    •  & Eli A. Silver

  • Article |

    Tsunami generation by megathrust earthquakes is enhanced by extensional faulting in the upper plate when the subducting slab shallows, according to numerical modelling and observations from the Sumatra–Andaman and Tohoku earthquake–tsunami events.

    • Bar Oryan
    •  & W. Roger Buck

  • Editorial |

    The first marsquakes detected by NASA’s InSight mission mark just the start of seismology on Mars. Both Earth and planetary scientists alike should embrace this new frontier of geophysics.

  • Comment |

    The InSight mission on Mars is currently providing us with the first seismic data from a planetary body other than our own Earth since the 1970s. Past efforts will inform this next chapter in planetary seismology.

    • Yosio Nakamura

  • News & Views |

    Mars’s newest seismometer needed to separate marsquakes from meteorology. Continuous weather observations to keep it honest are revealing new facets of Mars’s churning atmosphere.

    • Nicholas Heavens

  • Perspective |

    Geophysical and meteorological measurements by NASA’s InSight lander on Mars reveal a planet that is seismically active and provide information about the interior, surface and atmospheric workings of Mars.

    • W. Bruce Banerdt
    • , Suzanne E. Smrekar
    •  & Mark Wieczorek

  • Article |

    Mars is seismically active: 24 subcrustal magnitude 3–4 marsquakes and 150 smaller events have been identified up to 30 September 2019, by an analysis of seismometer data from the InSight lander.

    • D. Giardini
    • , P. Lognonné
    •  & C. Yana

  • News & Views |

    Tectonic tremor may ultimately be caused by in situ fluid overpressure generated by chemical reactions between a subducting slab and the mantle, according to field and microstructural observations of a shear zone.

    • Kohtaro Ujiie

  • Article |

    Shallow moonquakes detected at four Apollo landing sites between 1969 and 1977 occurred during maximum stress and in close proximity to young faults, suggesting that the Moon is tectonically active, according to reanalyses of the seismic data and tidal force modelling.

    • Thomas R. Watters
    • , Renee C. Weber
    •  & Catherine L. Johnson

  • Article |

    Lower-mantle anisotropy is present beneath all subduction zones, indicating that dislocation creep is active in the lower mantle, according to analysis of 3D global seismic tomography images.

    • Ana M. G. Ferreira
    • , Manuele Faccenda
    •  & Lewis Schardong

  • News & Views |

    A magnitude 7.5 strike-slip earthquake that struck Palu, Indonesia, in 2018 unexpectedly generated a devastating tsunami. Seismic data reveal that its rupture propagated fast, at supershear speed. Whether the two are connected remains to be seen.

    • P. Martin Mai

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