Estimates of stress drop and crustal tectonic stress from the 27 February 2010 Maule, Chile, earthquake: Implications for fault strength

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth Vol. 116; no. B11
• Main Authors: Luttrell, Karen M., Tong, Xiaopeng, Sandwell, David T., Brooks, Benjamin A., Bevis, Michael G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-11-2011
• Subjects: crustal stress; Earthquakes; Estimates; Fault lines; Geodetics; Geophysics; Maule earthquake; Plate tectonics; Poisson's ratio; Rock deformation; Seismic activity; Seismology; semianalytic model; Shear stress; stress drop; Topography
• ISSN: 0148-0227; 2169-9313; 2156-2202; 2169-9356
• DOI: 10.1029/2011JB008509

The great 27 February 2010 Mw 8.8 earthquake off the coast of southern Chile ruptured a ∼600 km length of subduction zone. In this paper, we make two independent estimates of shear stress in the crust in the region of the Chile earthquake. First, we use a coseismic slip model constrained by geodetic observations from interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) and GPS to derive a spatially variable estimate of the change in static shear stress along the ruptured fault. Second, we use a static force balance model to constrain the crustal shear stress required to simultaneously support observed fore‐arc topography and the stress orientation indicated by the earthquake focal mechanism. This includes the derivation of a semianalytic solution for the stress field exerted by surface and Moho topography loading the crust. We find that the deviatoric stress exerted by topography is minimized in the limit when the crust is considered an incompressible elastic solid, with a Poisson ratio of 0.5, and is independent of Young's modulus. This places a strict lower bound on the critical stress state maintained by the crust supporting plastically deformed accretionary wedge topography. We estimate the coseismic shear stress change from the Maule event ranged from −6 MPa (stress increase) to 17 MPa (stress drop), with a maximum depth‐averaged crustal shear‐stress drop of 4 MPa. We separately estimate that the plate‐driving forces acting in the region, regardless of their exact mechanism, must contribute at least 27 MPa trench‐perpendicular compression and 15 MPa trench‐parallel compression. This corresponds to a depth‐averaged shear stress of at least 7 MPa. The comparable magnitude of these two independent shear stress estimates is consistent with the interpretation that the section of the megathrust fault ruptured in the Maule earthquake is weak, with the seismic cycle relieving much of the total sustained shear stress in the crust.
Key Points
Maule earthquake shear stress drop ranged from −6 to 17 MPa, depth average 4 MPa
Lower limit of crustal‐driving stress from topography is 27 MPa in rupture area
Ruptured fault is weak and little tectonic stress is transmitted to the back arc