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The Complexity of Earthquake Generation in Nature: Beyond Cascade and Pre-Slip

Description: 

Detection and analysis of earthquake precursory processes is a challenging topic that have concerned geoscientist from different disciplines over almost a century. The classical view on how earthquakes nucleate evolved for decades around two widely accepted models where the mainshock is promoted by either the stress change from previous earthquakes or the occurrence of an aseismic transient. The improvements in earthquake monitoring, integration of geodetic techniques to capture slow deformation, and the incorporation of artificial intelligence for seismic data processing recently allowed a more complete picture on how earthquake sequences evolve before the occurrence of the mainshock. Here, we review and compare the available analyses describing observations on precursory processes of 32 earthquake sequences covering a magnitude range M_W [3.2, 9.1]. We combine and present both seismological and geodetic analysis and discuss the patterns that emerge collectively, with a special emphasis on relating the observations with the physical processes driving the evolution of earthquake sequences. Our analysis highlights various structural, tectonic and boundary conditions that play a role in the dynamics of the earthquake sequences, as well as various physical processes that may be acting superimposed. From it, we propose the idea of earthquake nucleation as a complex imbricated process, involving several temporal and spatial scales.

Session: Earthquake Preparation Across Scales: Reconciling Geophysical Observations With Laboratory and Theory

Type: Oral

Date: 4/20/2023

Presentation Time: 10:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Patricia Martínez-Garzón

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors