Seno 2002
Seno 2002
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[1] Recent modeling of tsunami waveforms caused by tsunami produces the same order of stress drop (1 MPa) as ordinary
earthquakes indicates that fault slip occurred along the subduction earthquakes, and how such a stress can be maintained in stable
boundary close to the trench axis. On the other hand, it is well sliding sediments remains unresolved. Furthermore faulting close
known that seismicity is generally very low within ca. 50 km from to the trench axis must occur of very low dips, which makes the
the trench axis, and this has been attributed to the stable frictional uplift less efficient. To compensate this, Seno [2000] proposed that
soft sediments near the toe of the trench slope are offscraped by a
sliding properties of the subducted unconsolidated sediments. This
sudden horizontal movement of the backstop over the decollement
makes tsunamigenic slip near the trench difficult to explain. In (the detachment surface between offscraped and subducted sedi-
order to solve this dilemma, I propose that transition from stable ments), causing an inelastic uplift at the toe. This effect was
sliding to nearly zero friction, with a velocity-weakening property, demonstrated to be potentially effective by numerical simulations
occurs as a result of areal increase of zones of elevated fluid of tsunamis of the 1896 tsunami earthquake off the Sanriku coast
pressure, which may make fairly rapid seismic slip possible of northern Honshu [Tanioka and Seno, 2001]; the required fault
following the breakage of asperities at normal seismogenic depths. slip of 10 m without sediment deformation was reduced to 6 m.
This transition can be identified as seismic reflections with [4] Above all, the large slip occurring along a shallow part of
negative polarities, which may help to rate hazards for a coming the subduction boundary remains as the largest enigma regarding
large tsunami earthquake. INDEX TERMS: 7209 Seismology: tsunami earthquakes. It is known that seismicity is usually sparse
within a distance of ca. 50 km of the trench axis [Hirata et al.,
Earthquake dynamics and mechanics; 7223 Seismology: Seismic
1983; Byrne et al., 1988; Scholz, 1998], and this has been
hazard assessment and prediction; 7230 Seismology: Seismicity attributed to the stable frictional sliding of unconsolidated sedi-
and seismotectonics; 8120 Tectonophysics: Dynamics of ments subducted beneath the decollement and deeper zones [Mar-
lithosphere and mantle—general; 8123 Tectonophysics: one and Scholz, 1988; Scholz, 1998; Hyndman et al., 1997]. This
Dynamics, seismotectonics stable sliding property is characterized by a positive a b value,
where a and b are coefficients in the rate and state dependent
friction laws [Dieterich, 1979; Ruina, 1983], and a fault zone with
1. Introduction this property operates as an absorbing barrier [Tse and Rice, 1986;
[2] For a variety of reasons, and disaster mitigation in particular, Boatwright and Cocco, 1996; Kato and Hirasawa, 1999] if seismic
it is important to understand the occurrence of tsunami earth- faulting occurs at a nearby asperity, making the occurrence of
quakes, for which tsunamis are larger than expected given their tsunami earthquakes difficult to explain. In this paper, I show first
surface wave magnitudes. Previous studies have elucidated how that slip distributions associated with recent large earthquakes off
tsunami earthquakes occur and proposed various models for their northern Honshu are consistent with the above stable sliding
occurrence. Tsunami earthquakes are generally characterized by frictional properties, then discuss a possibility of transient effective
slow faulting, manifest as a deficiency of short period components normal stress and its effects on frictional stability as applied to the
of seismic radiation relative to long periods [Kanamori, 1972; occurrence of tsunami earthquakes.
Pelayo and Wiens, 1992; Kanamori and Kikuchi, 1993; Polet and
Kanamori, 2000]. However, it is also known that slow slip alone is 2. Recent Large Earthquakes Off Northern
insufficient to explain the small magnitudes compaired with
anomalously large tsunamis produced by some tsunami earth- Honshu
quakes, such as the 1896 Sanriku and 1946 Aleutian earthquakes [5] In the subduction zone off Sanriku, northern Honshu, close
[Fukao, 1979; Kanamori and Kikuchi, 1993]. Upheaval by high- to the rupture zone of the 1896 tsunami event, large (Ms > 7)
angle splay faulting off the main thrust within a weak accretionary earthquakes have occurred recently in 1989, 1992, and 1994
prism [Fukao, 1979], landslides caused by shaking [Kanamori and (Figure 1, Table 1). Though these events had aftershock areas
Kikuchi, 1993], and larger seismic slip due to low rigidity of extending very close to the trench axis, they were not tsunami
sediments along the shallow thrust zone [Geist and Bilek, 2001], earthquakes (compare their magnitudes with those of the 1896
have been proposed as mechanisms for the required additional event in Table 1). The asperities ruptured in these recent events
uplift. [Nagai et al., 2001; Yamanaka et al., 2001] were generally located
[3] On the other hand, recent modeling of tsunami waveforms in the deeper part of their aftershock zones (Figure 1, Hino et al.
of tsunami earthquakes based on dislocation theory has revealed [1999]; Tohoku University [1990]), indicating that only small
that fault slip in several cases occurred very close to the trench axis amounts of seismic slip occurred in the shallow portion near the
[Satake, 1994; Piatanesi et al., 1996; Tanioka and Satake, 1996; trench. Moreover, borehole strain meters on the coast and GPS
Johnson and Satake, 1997; Satake and Tanioka, 1999]. Tsunami velocities throughout northern Honshu indicate that large amounts
source areas of historical tsunami earthquakes also show similar of afterslip occurred with a time scale of 1 day to 1 year in the
features [Ishibashi, 1983, 1986]. These make the involvement of aftershock zones of these events [Kawasaki et al., 1995; Heki et al.,
splay faults unlikely. The low rigidity (10 GPa) of sediments in 1997]. This behavior, i.e., small slip at the time of an earthquake
the shallow portion of the boundary can produce larger slip given and large afterslip, is similar to that predicted by the numerical
the same seismic moment [Geist and Bilek, 2001], however, this simulation of frictional slip with a stable sliding zone in the
shallow portion of the subduction boundary [Kato and Hirasawa,
Copyright 2002 by the American Geophysical Union. 1999]. These are completely consistent with the idea that a shallow
0094-8276/02/2002GL014868$05.00 subduction boundary constitutes a fault zone with positive a b
58 - 1
58 - 2 SENO: TSUNAMI EARTHQUAKES AS TRANSIENT PHENOMENA
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