The 2010 Maule, Chile earthquake: Downdip rupture limit revealed by space geodesy
Abstract
Radar interferometry from the ALOS satellite captured the coseismic ground deformation associated with the 2010 Mw 8.8 Maule, Chile earthquake. The ALOS interferograms reveal a sharp transition in fringe pattern at ~150 km from the trench axis that is diagnostic of the downdip rupture limit of the Maule earthquake. An elastic dislocation model based on ascending and descending ALOS interferograms and 13 near-field 3-component GPS measurements reveals that the coseismic slip decreases more or less linearly from a maximum of 17 m (along-strike average of 6.5 m) at 18 km depth to near zero at 43–48 km depth, quantitatively indicating the downdip limit of the seismogenic zone. The depth at which slip drops to near zero appears to be at the intersection of the subducting plate with the continental Moho. Our model also suggests that the depth where coseismic slip vanishes is nearly uniform along the strike direction for a rupture length of ~600 km. The average coseismic slip vector and the interseismic velocity vector are not parallel, which can be interpreted as a deficit in strike-slip moment release.
Additional Information
© 2010 American Geophysical Union. Received 14 October 2010; accepted 2 November 2010; published 30 December 2010. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation Geophysics Program (EAR 0811772) and the NASA Geodetic Imaging Program (NNX09AD12G). Research for this project at the Caltech Tectonic Observatory was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.Attached Files
Published - Tong2010p12538Geophys_Res_Lett.pdf
Supplemental Material - 2010gl045805-txts01.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 22072
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110208-105051893
- EAR 0811772
- NSF
- NNX09AD12G
- NASA
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Created
-
2011-03-10Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Caltech Tectonics Observatory