Myanmar's massive earthquake was very smooth and effective – and holds lessons for 'The Big One'

The fault that erupted in Myanmar in March, breaking hundreds of miles of land, was highly effective in transporting energy from deep within the Earth to the surface.

In many earthquakes, the surface moves more below the surface than at the surface. A new study shows that the earthquake on the Sagaing Fault was different because the surface moved as deep as the rock. This was likely because the Saigang Fault dates back to between 14 million and 28 million years ago.

“Over this long time, the jagged edges and bends in the fault have been crushed,” first author Eric Lindsay, a geoscientist at the University of New Mexico, said in a statement. “Because it is very smooth and straight, seismic rupture can travel very efficiently over a large distance.”

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When the 7.7-magnitude quake struck on March 28, it tore about 300 miles (500 kilometers) of land — a remarkably long surface tear. Lindsay said earthquake faults are usually 19 to 37 miles (30 to 60 kilometers) apart. This rupture was accompanied by very severe tremors, and more than 5,400 people died.

Because of the damage to infrastructure caused by the earthquake and the ongoing armed conflict in Myanmar, Lindsay and his colleagues turned to satellite images to study the event. They used both optical images and radar data from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites to track Earth's motion down to a fraction of an inch.

Their findings, published December 8 in the journal Nature Communications, showed that the earthquake was very effective in transferring its energy to the surface. Earthquakes originate deep within the Earth. In the case of the Myanmar earthquake, rupture began at a depth of 6 miles (10 km) or so. Most of the time, underground motion is not fully transmitted to the surface – a phenomenon called “shallow slip deficit.” (Slippage is the movement of one side of a fault against the other side.) In the Myanmar earthquake, there was no shallow slip deficit.

“The enormous amount of slippage that occurred miles underground was 100% transferred to the surface,” Lindsay said.

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The ground surface on one side of the fault has moved 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 m) relative to the other side. This movement was captured on camera in a video clip, the first of its kind.

Lindsay explained that because of the efficient transfer of energy from deep within the Earth to the surface, an earthquake that occurs on a mature fault like the one that struck Myanmar may cause the ground to shake more than an earthquake that occurs on a rougher fault line.

“The importance is safety,” he said. “This earthquake has shown us that mature faults can be more efficient at transporting energy to the surface than younger faults, which has direct implications for how infrastructure is built to withstand a ‘big earthquake’ in the United States.”

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