Predictable recovery rates in near-surface materials after earthquake damage

Luc Illien (), Jens M. Turowski, Christoph Sens-Schönfelder, Clément Berenfeld and Niels Hovius
Additional contact information
Luc Illien: GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences
Jens M. Turowski: GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences
Christoph Sens-Schönfelder: GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences
Clément Berenfeld: Department of Mathematics
Niels Hovius: GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Earthquakes introduce transient mechanical damage in the subsurface, which causes postseismic hazards and can take years to recover. This observation has been linked to relaxation, a phenomenon observed in a wide range of materials after straining perturbations, but systematic controls on the recovery duration in the shallow subsurface after earthquake ground shaking have not been determined. Here, we analyse the effects of two successive large earthquakes and their aftershocks on ground properties using estimates of seismic velocity from ambient noise interferometry. We show that the relaxation time scale is a constant that is an intrinsic property of the substrate, independent of the intensity of ground shaking. Our study highlights the predictability of earthquake damage dynamics in the shallow subsurface and also in other materials. This finding may be reconciled with existing state variable frameworks by considering the superposition of different populations of damaged contacts.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57151-8 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-57151-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-57151-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().