Previous fracture damage can prevent earthquake-induced slippage

Editor's Highlights are summaries of recent research written by AGU journal editors. Source: Geophysical Research Letters

When earthquakes fracture the Earth's surface, they create surface tears along existing faults that are surrounded by areas of damage. These damage zones consist of rocks that have broken down during past earthquakes. It is unclear how this pre-existing damage affects future earthquake ruptures. Some argue that further damage prevents energy storage, and thus the damage prevents earthquake rupture. Others argue that the damage weakens the fault and leads to more seismic slip.

Wu et al. [2024] He measured pre-existing damage around the surface rupture of the 2008 Mw7.9 Wenchuan earthquake in China. This unique data set allows for a rare comparison between earthquake slip and pre-existing fracture damage. The data show an inverse relationship between the amount of fracture damage and the amount of near-surface slip in an earthquake. In other words, the study showed that in this earthquake, existing damage prevented slippage.

The study suggests that as a fault accumulates near-surface damage, it may also reduce (assuming the damage does not heal) the amount of near-surface slip that can occur in future earthquakes. This also has implications for risk assessment as the distribution of future slip may be related to the distribution of existing damage – a hypothesis that should be tested at additional sites.

Citation: Wu, C. H., Cui, P., Klinger, Y., Tan, X. B., Yi, S. J., & Li, Y. S. (2024). Damage from a pre-existing fault can impede fault-induced seismic slip. Geophysical Research Letters, 51, e2024GL111198. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL111198

—Aki Fagering, associate editor, Geophysical Research Letters

Text © 2024. The Authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unless otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission of the copyright owner is prohibited.

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