Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Remote triggering of deep earthquakes in the 2002 Tonga sequences

Nature volume 424, pages 921–925 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

It is well established that an earthquake in the Earth's crust can trigger subsequent earthquakes, but such triggering has not been documented for deeper earthquakes. Models for shallow fault interactions suggest that static (permanent) stress changes can trigger nearby earthquakes, within a few fault lengths from the causative earthquake1,2,3, whereas dynamic (transient) stresses carried by seismic waves may trigger earthquakes both nearby and at remote distances4,5,6,7,8. Here we present a detailed analysis of the 19 August 2002 Tonga deep earthquake sequences and show evidence for both static and dynamic triggering. Seven minutes after a magnitude 7.6 earthquake occurred at a depth of 598 km, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake (664 km depth) occurred 300 km away, in a previously aseismic region. We found that nearby aftershocks of the first mainshock are preferentially located in regions where static stresses are predicted to have been enhanced by the mainshock. But the second mainshock and other triggered events are located at larger distances where static stress increases should be negligible, thus suggesting dynamic triggering. The origin times of the triggered events do not correspond to arrival times of the main seismic waves from the mainshocks and the dynamically triggered earthquakes frequently occur in aseismic regions below or adjacent to the seismic zone. We propose that these events are triggered by transient effects in regions near criticality, but where earthquakes have difficulty nucleating without external influences.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Epicentral locations of the two 2002 Tonga deep earthquake sequences.
Figure 2: Vertical cross-section perpendicular to the deep Tonga slab showing the 95% confidence ellipsoid for the location of the triggered 2002 Tonga sequence.
Figure 3: Map showing the location of the first sequence in the 2002 Tonga deep earthquakes, and the calculated static Coulomb stress changes at 585 km (a) and 610 km depth (b) associated with the mainshock (see Methods).
Figure 4: The 1986 Tonga sequence.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. King, G. C. P., Stein, R. S. & Lin, J. Static stress changes and the triggering of earthquakes. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 84, 935–953 (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Harris, R. A. Introduction to special section: stress triggers, stress shadows, and implications for seismic hazard. J. Geophys. Res. 103, 24347–24358 (1998)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Stein, R. S. The role of stress transfer in earthquake occurrence. Nature 402, 605–609 (1999)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Hill, D. P. et al. Seismicity remotely triggered by the magnitude 7.3 Landers, California, earthquake. Science 260, 1617–1623 (1993)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Harris, R. A. & Day, S. M. Dynamics of faults interaction: parallel strike-slip faults. J. Geophys. Res. 98, 4461–4472 (1993)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Belardinelli, M. E., Cocco, M., Coutant, O. & Cotton, F. Redistribution of dynamic stress during coseismic ruptures: evidence for fault interaction and earthquake triggering. J. Geophys. Res. 104, 14925–14945 (1999)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Kilb, D., Gomberg, J. & Bodin, P. Triggering of earthquake aftershocks by dynamic stresses. Nature 408, 570–574 (2000)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Gomberg, J., Blanpied, M. L. & Beeler, N. M. Transient triggering of near and distant earthquakes. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 87, 295–309 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Frohlich, C. The nature of deep-focus earthquakes. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 17, 227–254 (1989)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Green, H. W. & Houston, H. The mechanics of deep earthquakes. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 23, 169–213 (1995)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Kirby, S. H., Stein, S., Okal, E. A. & Rubie, D. C. Metastable mantle phase transformations and deep earthquake in subducting oceanic lithosphere. Rev. Geophys. 34, 261–306 (1996)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  12. Wiens, D. A. Seismological constraints on the mechanism of deep earthquakes: temperature dependence of deep earthquake source properties. Phys. Earth. Planet. Inter. 127, 145–163 (2001)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  13. Tibi, R., Bock, G. & Wiens, D. A. Source characteristics of large deep earthquakes: constraint on the faulting mechanism at great depths. J. Geophys. Res. 108, doi:101029/2002JB001948 (2003)

  14. Jaeger, J.C. & Cook, N.G.W. Fundamentals of Rock Mechanics (Chapman and Hall, London, 1979)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Wiens, D. W. & McGuire, J. J. Aftershocks of the March 9, 1994, Tonga earthquake: the strongest known deep aftershock sequence. J. Geophys. Res. 105, 19067–19083 (2000)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Cotton, F. & Coutant, O. Dynamic stress variations due to shear faults in a plane-layered medium. Geophys. J. Int. 128, 676–688 1997)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  17. Kisslinger, C. A review of theories of mechanisms of induced seismicity. Eng. Geol. 10, 85–98 (1976)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Gomberg, J., Reasenberg, P. A., Bodin, P. & Harris, R. A. Earthquake triggering by seismic waves following the Landers and Hector Mine earthquakes. Nature 411, 462–466 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Van der Hilst, R. D. Complex morphology of subducted lithosphere in the mantle beneath the Tonga trench. Nature 374, 154–157 (1995)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Chen, W.-P. & Brudzinski, M. R. Evidence for a large-scale remnant of subducted lithosphere beneath Fiji. Science 292, 2475–2479 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Tibi, R. Untersuchungen der Ursache von Tiefherdbeben mit Hilfe von Breitbandseismogrammen. Scientific Technical Report STR00/08 (GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Potsdam, 2000)

    Google Scholar 

  22. McGuire, J. J., Wiens, D. A., Shore, P. J. & Bevis, M. G. The March 9, 1994 (Mw 7.6), deep Tonga earthquake: rupture outside the seismically active slab. J. Geophys. Res. 102, 15163–15182 (1997)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Hudnut, K. W., Seeber, L. & Pacheco, J. Cross-fault triggering in the November 1987 Superstition Hills earthquake sequence, Southern California. Geophys. Res. Lett. 16, 199–202 (1989)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Freed, A. M. & Lin, J. Delayed triggering of the 1999 Hector Mine earthquake by viscoelastic stress transfer. Nature 411, 180–183 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Pollitz, F. F. & Sacks, I. S. The 1995 Kobe, Japan, earthquake: a long-delayed aftershock of the offshore 1944 Tonankai and 1946 Nankaido earthquakes. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 87, 1–7 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  26. King, G. C. P. & Cocco, M. Fault interaction by elastic stress changes: new clues from earthquake sequences. Adv. Geophys. 44, 1–38 (2000)

    ADS  Google Scholar 

  27. Ogawa, M. Shear instability in a viscoelastic material as the cause of deep focus earthquakes. J. Geophys. Res. 92, 13801–13810 (1987)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  28. Hobbs, B. E. & Ord, A. Plastic instabilities: implications for the origin of intermediate and deep focus earthquakes. J. Geophys. Res. 93, 10521–10521 (1988)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Karato, S., Riedel, M. R. & Yuen, D. A. Rheological structure and deformation of subducted slabs in the mantle transition zone: implications for mantle circulation and deep earthquakes. Phys. Earth Plant. Inter. 127, 83–108 (2001)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  30. Jordan, T. H. & Sverdrup, K. A. Teleseismic location techniques and their application to earthquake clusters in the South-Central Pacific. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 71, 1105–1130 (1981)

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  31. Nábělek, J. L., Determination of Earthquake Source Parameters from Inversion of Body Waves. PhD thesis, MIT (1984)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Toda, S., Stein, R. S., Reasenberg, P. A., Dieterich, J. H. & Yoshida, A. Stress transferred by the 1995 Mw = 6.9 Kobe, Japan, shock: effect on aftershocks and future earthquake probabilities. J. Geophys. Res. 103, 24543–24565 (1998)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  33. Engdahl, E. R., van der Hilst, R. & Buland, R. Global teleseismic earthquake relocation with improved travel times and procedures for depth determination. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 88, 722–742 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Gudmundsson, Ó. & Sambridge, M. A regionalized upper mantle (RUM) seismic model. J. Geophys. Res. 103, 7121–7136 (1998)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  35. Dziewonski, A. M., Chou, T.-A. & Woodhouse, J. H. Determination of earthquake source parameters from waveform data for studies of global and regional seismicity. J. Geophys. Res. 86, 2825–2852 (1981)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank D. Suetsugu and the operators of the SPANET network for their efforts, R. Stein for making his code available, and J. Conder and N. Kagotho for reading the manuscript. Waveforms data were supplied by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), Geoscope, and GeoForschungsNetz (GEOFON). Arrival time data were obtained from the ISC and PDE (US Geological Survey). This research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, 63130, USA

    Rigobert Tibi & Douglas A. Wiens

  2. National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0006, Japan

    Hiroshi Inoue

Authors
  1. Rigobert Tibi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Douglas A. Wiens
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Hiroshi Inoue
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rigobert Tibi.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Tibi, R., Wiens, D. & Inoue, H. Remote triggering of deep earthquakes in the 2002 Tonga sequences. Nature 424, 921–925 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01903

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01903

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing