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Large earthquakes and creeping faults
Author(s) -
Harris Ruth A.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
reviews of geophysics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 8.087
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1944-9208
pISSN - 8755-1209
DOI - 10.1002/2016rg000539
Subject(s) - seismology , geology , fault (geology) , magnitude (astronomy) , seismic gap , san andreas fault , slow earthquake , tectonics , seismic hazard , remotely triggered earthquakes , continental crust , crust , interplate earthquake , geophysics , intraplate earthquake , physics , astronomy
Faults are ubiquitous throughout the Earth's crust. The majority are silent for decades to centuries, until they suddenly rupture and produce earthquakes. With a focus on shallow continental active‐tectonic regions, this paper reviews a subset of faults that have a different behavior. These unusual faults slowly creep for long periods of time and produce many small earthquakes. The presence of fault creep and the related microseismicity helps illuminate faults that might not otherwise be located in fine detail, but there is also the question of how creeping faults contribute to seismic hazard. It appears that well‐recorded creeping fault earthquakes of up to magnitude 6.6 that have occurred in shallow continental regions produce similar fault‐surface rupture areas and similar peak ground shaking as their locked fault counterparts of the same earthquake magnitude. The behavior of much larger earthquakes on shallow creeping continental faults is less well known, because there is a dearth of comprehensive observations. Computational simulations provide an opportunity to fill the gaps in our understanding, particularly of the dynamic processes that occur during large earthquake rupture and arrest.