UNM Newsroom: Earthquake and tsunami risks from subduction zones may be higher than current estimates

Two of nature’s most devastating forces – earthquakes and tsunamis – may be more of a threat than current estimates, according to new research by scientists at the University of New Mexico and Nanyang Technological University titled Slip Rate Deficit and the Potential for Earthquakes on Shallow Giants. The research is published today in Nature Geoscience.

Researchers have developed a new method for assessing earthquake and tsunami hazards that are the farthest from marine subduction zones and found that the risks may have been systematically minimized in some areas, which means that tsunami risks must be re-evaluated in light of the new findings. The results have important implications for risk mitigation in affected areas around the world, including Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim, in the event of future earthquakes and tsunamis.

Massive earthquakes are among the strongest earthquakes that have occurred around the world and occur in subduction zones, where two tectonic plates meet, and one of them slides under the other. The panels move toward each other continuously, but if the façade or fault between them is stuck, the slip deficit builds up over time. Like debt, this slip deficit must eventually be paid off, and for plate tectonics, the payday is the day of the earthquake. When these earthquakes affect the weakest part of the rift near the sea floor, they have the potential to turn the sea floor up and create devastating tsunamis as well.

“If these areas could slip down seismically, the global tsunami risk could be higher than is currently known.” – Eric Lindsay, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico

Therefore, understanding the potential rupture behavior of giant crusts, particularly in the shallow marine portion of the rift where most of the damaging tsunamis are generated, is a critical task for geologists predicting earthquake and tsunami hazards. It is often assumed that the probability of seismic behavior is rather low in the shallow portion of the fault, based on laboratory studies of the recovered fault zone materials.

The rate of accumulation of fault slip deficit can also be measured through the use of geodetic observations that track how the Earth’s surface moves over time, for example using high-precision GPS sensors mounted on the ground, along with a model that relates how sliding on the fault affects the movement of these stations. However, it is difficult for scientists to use this technology to “see” what is happening in the shallow part of the rift because it is so far from the ground, under kilometers of water, that conventional GPS devices do not work.

Now, scientists at the University of New Mexico and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have developed a new geodesic method for inferring this value that explains the interaction between different parts of the error, resulting in a more physically accurate result. Lindsey’s team noted that previous models failed to take into account the fact that if the deep part of the fault is stuck between earthquakes, the shallow portion cannot move either – it’s in what they call a “stress shadow” and there is no accumulation of energy available to cause the slip. By taking this effect into account, the team developed a technique that uses the same ground-based data but significantly improves their ability to “see” fault slip in offshore areas, allowing researchers to reassess the representations of hazards from the marine portions of the more subduction zones. Prone to generate tsunamis.

Eric Lindsay, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UNM who conducted the research while at NTU’s Singapore Earth Observatory, said. “If these areas could slip seismically, the global tsunami risk could be higher than currently known. Our method identifies critical locations where sea floor observations can provide information about the frictional properties of these faults to better understand sliding behavior.”

This study is important because it calls for a reassessment of past models of tsunami hazard to gigantic buckets around the world. Since this can be done with existing data, revaluation can be done relatively quickly as well. Hopefully, this will lead to better preparedness among coastal communities for future events.

Other institutions involved in the research include the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, Yishai Tec University (Ecuador) and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Berkeley. The study is supported by the National Research of Singapore, the Singapore Ministry of Education, the National Science Foundation, among others.

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