Evidence for a difference in rupture initiation between small and large earthquakes

S. Colombelli, A. Zollo (), G. Festa and M. Picozzi
Additional contact information
S. Colombelli: University of Naples Federico II, Complesso Universitario Monte S. Angelo, via Cinthia
A. Zollo: University of Naples Federico II, Complesso Universitario Monte S. Angelo, via Cinthia
G. Festa: University of Naples Federico II, Complesso Universitario Monte S. Angelo, via Cinthia
M. Picozzi: University of Naples Federico II, Complesso Universitario Monte S. Angelo, via Cinthia

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-5

Abstract: Abstract The process of earthquake rupture nucleation and propagation has been investigated through laboratory experiments and theoretical modelling, but a limited number of observations exist at the scale of earthquake fault zones. Distinct models have been proposed, and whether the magnitude can be predicted while the rupture is ongoing represents an unsolved question. Here we show that the evolution of P-wave peak displacement with time is informative regarding the early stage of the rupture process and can be used as a proxy for the final size of the rupture. For the analysed earthquake set, we found a rapid initial increase of the peak displacement for small events and a slower growth for large earthquakes. Our results indicate that earthquakes occurring in a region with a large critical slip distance have a greater likelihood of growing into a large rupture than those originating in a region with a smaller slip-weakening distance.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4958 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:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms4958

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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4958

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 ().