What does the Sparta earthquake tell us about shallow earthquakes?

On August 9, 2020, 8:07 a.m., the ground in Sparta, North Carolina shook on its own, this is not a rare occurrence – North Carolina has earthquakes, often near the Appalachian mountain range. But this earthquake was unique in a different way: It was a shallow earthquake that ruptured the Earth’s surface on a previously unknown fault line. In fact, the Sparta earthquake is the first documented surface rupture earthquake in the eastern United States

Why such a big deal? there are many reasons. First, it is very rare for an earthquake of moderate intensity (the Sparta earthquake was 5.1) to cause a rupture on the surface. Most earthquakes are generated along fault planes deep in the Earth (usually five to seven miles below the surface), and a moderate earthquake at depth does not have enough energy to break the fault all the way to the surface.

But this earthquake was shallow, with a low center, or depth, roughly three-quarters of a mile below the surface. This brings us to the second interesting thing about this earthquake: It not only caused the ground to rupture, but it did so along a previously unknown fault line. Incidentally, this fault line is now called the Little River Fault.

In short, the Sparta earthquake is interesting to geologists because: it shows that shallow, moderate earthquakes can shatter the Earth’s surface; They may be more common than previously thought; It can even occur in unknown defects.

When we think of faults, the faults we are most likely to imagine are those caused by plate tectonics within the Earth.

says Paula Marques Figueiredo, a postdoctoral research assistant at NC State and lead author of a recent study on the Sparta earthquake.

“These faults are structures inherited from plate tectonics that occurred millions of years ago,” Figueiredo says. “Although the old plate boundary is no longer active and no longer exists, these fault structures are still able to move — they are like the scars left over from tectonic plates. They produce earthquakes less frequently and may have weaker seismicity.”

“Because earthquakes are less frequent at these faults than at active plate boundaries, this type of earthquake is less well understood.”

This is another part of what made the Sparta earthquake so exciting for geologists.

“We think that these less active faults – which lie outside the boundaries of the active plate and don’t ‘feel’ the forces of plate tectonics to the same extent – tend to move when there are pressure changes at the surface above them,” Figueiredo says. “These pressure changes can be caused by things like sediment or water being added or released over time; for example, the weight and removal of large glaciers or large rivers depositing and removing tons of sediment. But these characteristics do not apply in the Sparta region, Which means there may be something else we don’t fully understand yet.

When the research team studied the earthquake further, they found evidence of previous earthquakes in that fault, although they are still working to determine how long these quakes may have occurred.

“It seems strange to say that an earthquake can be subtle, but the evidence in the geology and landscape here certainly is,” Figueiredo says. “There is still a lot to understand – we don’t even know when the fault line formed – but hopefully this earthquake will tell us more about these shallow earthquakes not only in North Carolina, but around the world.”

The study, “The Mw 5.1, August 9, 2020, Sparta Earthquake, North Carolina: The first surface rupture documented in the eastern United States,” was recently published in GSA Today. The NC State co-authors are Dale Boennichtel, Karl Wegmann, Louis Owen, and Cory Shipp.

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