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Room: Exhibit Hall A+B

Date: 4/16/2026

Session Time: 8:00 AM to 5:45 PM (local time)

SSJ-SSOC-SSA Joint Session: From Slow to Fast Earthquakes: Bridging the Spectrum of Fault Slip

Over the past two decades, growing evidence has shown that earthquake faults accommodate a wide spectrum of slip behaviors, ranging from long-lasting slow slip events to unstable, fast ruptures that generate damaging seismic waves within seconds. Between these extremes exist a variety of intermediate phenomena. Together, these slip modes illustrate that fault slip is not a simple binary process, but rather a continuum that plays a fundamental role in nucleation, rupture dynamics and the spatial distribution of slip and energy release.

A central challenge is to understand how these slip behaviors are related, and in particular, how and when a slow earthquake transitions into a fast one. Answering this question requires careful examination of fault structure, stress, fluids and frictional properties and demands contributions from multiple disciplines. Observational seismology and geodesy provide constraints on where and when slow and fast slip occur, while geological and field studies reveal the physical record of past events. Laboratory experiments and rock mechanics shed light on the processes that govern slip modes, and numerical modeling and theoretical approaches offer frameworks for integrating observations and testing physical mechanisms.

This session invites contributions that advance our understanding of slow and fast earthquakes and their potential connections. We welcome geophysical observations, field and laboratory studies, theoretical and numerical investigations and methodological innovations. Submissions that integrate multiple observations and/or perspectives are strongly encouraged. Cutting-edge approaches in data science, machine learning and novel computational methods that enable the detection, analysis and interpretation of diverse slip modes are also particularly welcome. By bringing together these efforts, this session seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the spectrum of fault slip and its role in earthquake generation.

This session is jointly organized by the Seismological Society of Japan, Seismological Society of China and Seismological Society of America.

Conveners

Aitaro Kato, University of Tokyo (akato@eri.u-tokyo.ac.jp)
Jiun-Ting Lin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (lin51@llnl.gov)
David Shelly, U.S. Geological Survey (dshelly@usgs.gov)
Haijiang Zhang, University of Science and Technology of China (zhang11@ustc.edu.cn)

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