Stress Transfer by Slow Slip Events in the Guerrero Segment of Plate Interface in the Mexican Subduction Zone.

Abstract:

Five large Slow Slip Events (SSE) occurred in the Guerrero segment of the Mexican Subduction zone during the last 18 years. Different authors have inverted GPS data to obtain kinematic slip evolution and slip distribution on the plate interface for the 2006 and 2009-2010 SSEs (e.g., Radiguet et al., 2011, 2012, Cavalie et al., 2013).

These results show that the slow slip may propagate partly updip into the seismogenic portion of the Guerrero seismic gap. Because of this, the occurrence of the SSEs may be related with the rupture of subsequent large subduction thrust earthquakes in this region. In this study we compute the Coulomb failure stress changes produced by the 2006 and 2009-2010 Slow Slip Events along the extended megathrust fault interface using different published inverted slip distributions. We then compare the stress changes with the hypocentral locations, slip distributions and stress changes from the recent large subduction thrust earthquakes in the same segment of the subduction zone. Stress changes for the earthquakes are also obtained taking into account the different slip distributions from kinematic inversions. As the first approach we assume a flat plate interface with two different subduction angles.