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Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America; December 2001; v. 91; no. 6; p. 1685-1693; DOI: 10.1785/0120000298
© 2001 Seismological Society of America
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Article

A Physical Basis for Time Clustering of Large Earthquakes

Jean Chéry, Sébastien Merkel and Stéphane Bouissou*

Laboratoire de Géophysique
Tectonique et Sédimentologie
Université de Montpellier II
34095 Montpellier, France
(J.S., S.B.)

Carnegie Institution
5251 Broad Branch Road
Washington, D.C.
(S.M.)

We develop a theory that links stress interaction between earthquakes and the occurrence of temporal clustering. Coseismic static stress change in the vicinity (50 km) of large earthquakes suggests that perturbations of 0.1 to 1 bars may affect the occurrence of other earthquakes. At larger distances, interactions also seem to exist: four M 8 earthquakes have occurred in Mongolia on distant faults (400 km) during the last century. Also, paleoseismic observations documenting much longer time periods display a time clustering of major events. We demonstrate with simple mechanical concepts that postseismic stress relaxation magnifies the coseismic stress change and has a major effect on fault interaction during the seismic cycle. In the simple case where two distant faults are coupled, the probabilistic occurrence of triggered earthquakes may increase dramatically due to long range postseismic coupling.




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W. Marzocchi and J. Selva
Long-Term Influence of Giant Earthquakes: Backward Empirical Evidence and Forward Test
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, June 1, 2008; 98(3): 1102 - 1112.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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