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Source Modeling of the 2009 Fengpin–Hualien Earthquake Sequence, Taiwan, Inferred From Static Strain Measurements

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Abstract

We analyze high-resolution borehole strainmeter signals to constrain the fault plane solutions and locations of the 2009 Fengpin-Hualien earthquakes, in eastern Taiwan. The December \(M_w\) 6.6 earthquake has ruptured a narrow section of the Collision Seismic Zone (within depth of 34 to 44 km), an active structure located offshore northeast Taiwan. The October \(M_w\) 6.3 event has ruptured the deep section of the Longitudinal Valley fault (25–32 km depth) located between Fengpin and Fanglin. Coulomb stress changes induced by the October event in the hypocenter region of the December event are low (< +30 kPa), which suggests that the latter event was not induced by static stress transfer. The December event is characterized by an abundant seismicity for about 2.5 days following the mainshock. The temporal evolution between the aftershock rate and geodetic strain suggests that seismicity could have been controlled by a short-lived frictional afterslip. Besides, we infer that significant positive static Coulomb stress changes (> +100 kPa) induced by this sequence at shallow to moderate depths in the Longitudinal Valley (0–12 km) may have influenced the occurrence of large mainshocks in eastern Taiwan during the past decade. Conversely, limited stress (< +30 kPa) is transferred to the shallow, locked section of the southernmost Ryukyu trench. This study emphasizes the importance of borehole strain measurements in active regions to enhance detection of seismic and aseismic events unresolved by surface geodesy.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Editor-in-Chief Carla F. Braitenberg and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive suggestions and comments allowing to improve the manuscript. We are grateful to Alan Linde, Selwyn Sacks and the support staff of the Carnegie Institution of Washington for the construction, installation, and maintenance of the dilatometers and to Hsin-Ming Lee who has collected the strainmeter data. The authors acknowledge Yi-Chuen Tsai and Mei-Jun Yu for processing the GPS data and Ya-Ju Hsu, Hsin-Hua Huang and Jian-Cheng Lee for useful discussions. We are grateful to Marion Thomas for providing the LVF fault model. Some figures were drawn using the Generic Mapping Tools (Wessel and Smith, 1998). This is the contribution of the Institute of Earth Sciences, Academia Sinica, IESAS2396.

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This research is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology grant MOST 108-2116-M-001-027-MY2.

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  1. Institute of Earth Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    Hsiao-Fan Lin & Alexandre Canitano

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Yu-Fang Hsu

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Material preparation, conceptualization, data processing, and analysis were performed by HFL, YFH and AC. The first draft of the manuscript was written by AC and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Lin, HF., Hsu, YF. & Canitano, A. Source Modeling of the 2009 Fengpin–Hualien Earthquake Sequence, Taiwan, Inferred From Static Strain Measurements. Pure Appl. Geophys. 180, 715–733 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-022-03068-y

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