Are asperity patterns persistent? Implication from large earthquakes in Papua New Guinea

We studied the distribution of asperities for large recent earthquakes along the New Britain trench, Papua New Guinea, to investigate if they are the same for repeated ruptures of the subduction boundary. We determined the slip distributions of two earthquakes (Mw ∼ 8) in 1971 using Pdiff waveforms,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Geophysical Research. B. Solid Earth 2007-03, Vol.112 (B3), p.n/a
Main Authors: Park, Sun-Cheon, Mori, Jim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
asperity
Earth sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
New Britain Trench
repeating earthquakes
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Summary:We studied the distribution of asperities for large recent earthquakes along the New Britain trench, Papua New Guinea, to investigate if they are the same for repeated ruptures of the subduction boundary. We determined the slip distributions of two earthquakes (Mw ∼ 8) in 1971 using Pdiff waveforms, and an earthquake (Mw 7.9) in 1995 using direct teleseismic P waves. Combining these findings with previous results for two earthquakes (Mw ∼ 7.5) in 2000, we compared the source areas and asperity distributions for this region of the New Britain Trench. Our results show that the locations of the asperities for the individual earthquakes did not significantly overlap, although the same portion of the subduction zone seems to have reruptured. This fact supports the idea that asperities are not persistent features when portions of the New Britain subduction zone slip in large earthquakes.
ISSN:0148-0227
2156-2202
DOI:10.1029/2006JB004481