Influence of structure and pore pressure of plate interface on tectonic tremor in the Nankai subduction zone, Japan

Modelling earthquakes by mapping the movement of undersea tremors

30 August 2021

Earthquake monitoring and modelling will benefit from a method that more accurately pinpoints the sources of weak tremors in regions containing complex geological features.

Pinpointing the locations of small tremors caused by one tectonic plate sliding under another can be difficult because geological structures distort the transmission of those tremors through the Earth’s crust. The Nankai Trough off the coast of Japan is the site of one such subduction zone.

Now, two researchers at Kyushu University in Japan have mapped the location of recent tremors in the Nankai Trough by accounting for geological features that might affect the time it takes for a tremor to travel from its source to one of 20 seismometers in the region, and between those measuring stations.

Once they had located the sites of the tremors, the team could use the information from those tremors to explore the subduction zone’s properties. This could help model the seismic features of the area and better predict potential earthquakes and tsunamis.

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References

1. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 558, 116742 (2021). doi: 10.1016/j.epsl.2021.116742