Publication Date:
2011-04-01
Description:
Two great earthquakes have occurred recently along the Sunda Trench, the 2004 M9.2 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and the 2005 M8.7 Nias earthquake. These earthquakes ruptured over 1600 km of adjacent crust within 3 mo of each other. We quantitatively present poroelastic deformation analyses suggesting that postseismic fluid flow and recovery induced by the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake advanced the timing of the Nias earthquake. Simple back-slip simulations indicate that the megapascal (MPa)-scale pore-pressure recovery is equivalent to 7 yr of interseismic Coulomb stress accumulation near the Nias earthquake hypocenter, implying that pore-pressure recovery of the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake advanced the timing of the Nias earthquake by [~]7 yr. That is, in the absence of postseismic pore-pressure recovery, we predict that the Nias earthquake would have occurred in 2011 instead of 2005.
Print ISSN:
1941-8264
Electronic ISSN:
1947-4253
Topics:
Geosciences
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