Numerical simulation of earthquake rupture sequences on the Manila thrust fault: Effects of seamount subduction

Abstract:

The Manila subduction zone is located at the convergent boundary between the Philippine Sea Plate and the Sunda/Eurasian Plate from offshore Taiwan to northern Luzon of Philippines, where only infrequent M7 earthquakes were observed in modern seismological instrumentation history. The lack of great events (M8+) indicates the subduction fault is either aseismically slipping or is accumulating strain energy toward rapid release in a great earthquake. Here we conduct numerical simulations of earthquake rupture sequences in the framework of rate-state-friction along the 15-19.5ºN segment of the 3D plate boundary with subducted seamounts. Rate-state frictional properties are constrained by laboratory friction experiments conducted on IODP Expedition 349, South China Sea (SCS), drilling samples from the basaltic basement rock under 100ºC – 600ºC, effective normal stress of 50 MPa and pore pressure of 100 MPa.

During the modeled 2000-year period, the maximum magnitude of earthquakes is Mw7. Each sequence repeats every ~200 years and is consisted of three sub-events, event 1 (Mw7) that can overcome the barrier, where dip angle changes most rapidly along the strike, to rupture the entire fault. Events 2 (Mw 6.4) and 3 (Mw 5.7) are of smaller magnitudes and result in north-south segmented rupture pattern. We further quantify the potential of earthquake nucleation by the S-ratio (lower S ratio means the initial stress is closer to peak strength, hence more likely to nucleate an earthquake). The subducted seamount shows higher S-ratios than its surroundings mostly, implying an unlikely nucleate area. Our results are qualitatively similar to 2D subduction earthquake modeling by Herrendörfer et al. (2015, 2-3 events per supercycle and median long-term S is 0.5-1).

Finally, we plan to use our coseismic rupture model results as inputs for a tsunami propagation model in SCS. Compared to the kinematic seafloor deformation input, our physics-based earthquake source model and its ability to explore a broad range of parameters, including the location and shape of subducted seamounts, will help improve earthquake and tsunami hazards assessment and mitigation in the populated regions around the SCS.