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    Solid earth sciences

    The 2016 Mw 5.9 earthquake off the southeastern coast of Mie Prefecture as an indicator of preparatory processes of the next Nankai Trough megathrust earthquake

    Nakano M, Hyodo M, Nakanishi A, Yamashita M, Hori T, Kamiya S, Suzuki K, Tonegawa T, Kodaira S, Takahashi N, Kaneda Y

    Hypocenter determination, Crustal structure, Ocean floor observations, Accretionary prism, Earthquake cycle simulation, Hierarchical asperity model

    Past seismic activities in the study area. (a) Orange star represents the epicenter location of the 2016 off -Mie earthquake; results from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the Global CMT Project (GCMT) are shown. Epicenters of earthquakes larger than M6 before and after 1976 are represented by diamonds and circles, respectively, from the JMA unified earthquake catalogue. Blue and red contours represent the slip distributions of the 1944 Tonankai and 1946 Nankai earthquakes, respectively (Ichinose et al. 2003; Murotani et al. 2015). Gray triangles represent locations of DONET stations. (b) Occurrence date of earthquakes plotted against their source longitude. Symbols are the same as in (a).

    Simulation result. (a) Spatiotemporal evolution of the slip rate V during the resultant earthquake cycles. Colors denote the slip velocity. Black region corresponds to strong coupling on the plate interface. Arrows denote occurrences of earthquakes with denoted magnitude. The vertical color bar in the middle panel denotes the depth distribution of (a-b)σeff. (b) Depth distributions of postseismic slip and slip rate just after the occurrence of a M6 earthquake indicated by solid arrows in (a). Cumulative slip and slip rate profiles are shown in the left and right side panels, respectively. Colors of lines indicate days after the M6 earthquake. The broken gray line represents the coseismic slip distribution of the M6 earthquake.

    Megathrust earthquakes have occurred repeatedly at intervals of 100 to 150 years along the Nankai Trough, situated in the southwest of Japan. Given that it has been 70 years since the last event, the occurrence of the next devastating earthquake is anticipated in the near future. On April 1, 2016, a moderate earthquake (Mw 5.9, MJMA 6.5) occurred off the southeastern coast of Mie Prefecture in the source region of the 1944 Tonankai earthquake (Mw 8.2). In this study, we investigated the influence of the 2016 earthquake on future megathrust earthquakes. We first determined the hypocenter distributions using a precise velocity structure obtained from seismic surveys in the source region. Using data obtained from the DONET ocean-bottom observation network, we found that this earthquake occurred along the plate boundary fault, which is also believed to have slipped during past megathrust earthquakes. We then performed a preliminary numerical simulation to reproduce the occurrence of a moderate earthquake in the middle of a megathrust earthquake cycle. We used a hierarchical asperity model, in which smaller asperities causing moderate earthquakes are embedded in a hyper-asperity that serves as the source region of megathrust earthquakes. The simulation shows that moderate earthquakes, caused by ruptures of a smaller asperity, occur as a result of shrinkage of strongly coupled areas in the hyper-asperity. This result is consistent with the observation that the hypocenter of the 2016 earthquake was located at the edge of a strongly coupled region along the plate boundary. The simulation also reproduced postseismic slip (afterslip/slow slip) along the plate boundary updip of the hyper-asperity, which is consistent with the observations of slow slip events and very-low-frequency earthquakes after the 2016 earthquake. Thus, the occurrence of the moderate earthquake offshore southeastern Mie Prefecture in the middle of the megathrust earthquake cycle implies that the shrinkage of the strongly coupled area along the plate boundary is occurring as a preparatory process for the next megathrust earthquake in the region.