Stress State in the Largest Displacement Area of the 2011 Tohoku-Oki Earthquake
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Large seismic events such as the 2011 magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake can have profound effects not just on the severity of ground motion and tsunami generation, but also on the overall state of the crust in the surrounding regions. Lin et al. (p. 687) analyzed the stress 1 year after the Tohoku-Oki earthquake and compared it with the estimated stress state before the earthquake. In situ resistivity images were analyzed from three boreholes drilled into the crust across the plate interface where the earthquake occurred. Stress values indicate a nearly complete drop in stress following the earthquake such that the type of faulting above the plate boundary has changed substantially. These findings are consistent with observations that the sea floor moved nearly 50 meters during the earthquake.
Abstract
The 2011 moment magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake produced a maximum coseismic slip of more than 50 meters near the Japan trench, which could result in a completely reduced stress state in the region. We tested this hypothesis by determining the in situ stress state of the frontal prism from boreholes drilled by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program approximately 1 year after the earthquake and by inferring the pre-earthquake stress state. On the basis of the horizontal stress orientations and magnitudes estimated from borehole breakouts and the increase in coseismic displacement during propagation of the rupture to the trench axis, in situ horizontal stress decreased during the earthquake. The stress change suggests an active slip of the frontal plate interface, which is consistent with coseismic fault weakening and a nearly total stress drop.
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Supplementary Material
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References and Notes
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Published In
Science
Volume 339 | Issue 6120
8 February 2013
8 February 2013
Copyright
Copyright © 2013, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 27 August 2012
Accepted: 30 November 2012
Published in print: 8 February 2013
Acknowledgments
For our research, we used data provided by IODP. The data will be distributed by IODP (www.iodp.org/access-data-and-samples). We thank all drilling and logging operation staff on board the D/V Chikyu during expedition 343. We gratefully acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped us to greatly improve this manuscript. Part of this work was supported by grant KAKENHI 22403008 (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science), grant 21107006 (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan), and the U.S. Science Support Program of IODP.
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