ALBERT

Description: We estimated spatiotemporal slip distributions from three long-term slow slip events (L-SSEs) that occurred beneath the Bungo Channel at the convergent plate boundary between the subducting oceanic Philippine Sea plate and the continental Amurian plate in southwest Japan between 1997 and 1998, 2002 and 2004 and 2009 and 2011. For this purpose, we employed an inversion method using a Bayesian Information Criterion (ABIC), which included the following three prior constraints: the spatial slip distribution was smooth to some extent, slip directions were mostly oriented in the direction of plate convergence and the temporal change in slip was smooth to some extent. Our results revealed that the three L-SSEs had a common feature: slipped regions expanded southwestward at accelerating slip velocities. We also found that major slipped regions migrated southwestward by approximately 50–100 km yr –1 . In contrast, southwestward and northeastward migration of the slipped regions, whose direction differed from event to event, was also identified before or after the periods when the slip velocities were at their greatest. Comparing the obtained spatiotemporal slip distributions of the three L-SSEs with slip-deficit rate distributions obtained in our previous study, we investigated the accumulation process of the slip deficit caused by slip-deficit rate distributions and the release processes of the slip deficit caused by the obtained spatiotemporal slip distributions of the three L-SSEs. At the western plate interface of the Bungo Channel, as the slip-deficit rate was small and the amounts of slips associated with the three L-SSEs were large, most of the accumulated slip deficit was estimated to have been released. In contrast, at the eastern plate interface, as the slip-deficit rate was large and the amounts of slips associated with the three L-SSEs were small, the slip deficit was estimated to have accumulated effectively. These results suggest that the slipped regions of the three L-SSEs and the strongly coupled region are not spatially complementary; the accumulated slip deficit showed spatial variation even at approximately the same depth range along the arc.