Abstract
Earthquakes start under conditions that are largely unknown. In laboratory analogue experiments and continuum models, earthquakes transition from slow-slipping, growing nucleation to fast-slipping rupture. In nature, earthquakes generally start abruptly, with no evidence for a nucleation process. Here we report evidence from a strike-slip fault zone in central Alaska of extended earthquake nucleation and of very-low-frequency earthquakes (VLFEs), a phenomenon previously reported only in subduction zone environments. In 2016, a VLFE transitioned into an earthquake of magnitude 3.7 and was preceded by a 12-hour-long accelerating foreshock sequence. Benefiting from 12 seismic stations deployed within 30 km of the epicentre, we identify coincident radiation of distinct high-frequency and low-frequency waves during 22 s of nucleation. The power-law temporal growth of the nucleation signal is quantitatively predicted by a model in which high-frequency waves are radiated from the vicinity of an expanding slow slip front. The observations reveal the continuity and complexity of slip processes near the bottom of the seismogenic zone of a strike-slip fault system in central Alaska.
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Change history
28 June 2018
In the version of this Article originally published, the ‘Data availability’ section contained an incorrect DOI for data from the FLATS (XV) seismic network (https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/ZE_2015); the correct DOI is: https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/XV_2014. This has now been corrected in the online versions.
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Acknowledgements
Seismic instruments, data archiving and data access were supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation grants EAR-1352668 and EAR-1645313, the Alaska Earthquake Center, the IRIS Data Management Center and the PASSCAL Instrument Center. Y.K. was supported by Rutherford Discovery Fellowship from the Royal Society of New Zealand.
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All authors contributed to the manuscript. C.T., S.H. and V.S. performed the seismological analyses of the two events. J.H. performed the phase coherence analysis (Fig. 3). Y.K., J.P.A. and J.H. contributed the rate-and-state modelling and interpretation. C.J. performed the source time function estimation. C.T., N.R., K.S. and M.E.W. were responsible for the deployment of FLATS seismic stations. N.R. and S.H. discovered the high-frequency and low-frequency signals for the 2015 event. S.H. discovered the low-frequency foreshock (VLFE) of the 2016 event.
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Tape, C., Holtkamp, S., Silwal, V. et al. Earthquake nucleation and fault slip complexity in the lower crust of central Alaska. Nature Geosci 11, 536–541 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0144-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0144-2
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