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Structural context of the 2015 pair of Nepal earthquakes (Mw 7.8 and Mw 7.3): an analysis based on slip distribution, aftershock growth, and static stress changes

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Abstract

The Great Himalayan earthquakes are believed to originate on the Main Himalayan Thrust, and their ruptures lead to deformation along the Main Frontal Thrust (MFT). The rupture of the April 25, 2015 (Mw 7.8), earthquake was east-directed, with no part relayed to the MFT. The aftershock distribution, coseismic elevation change of ~1 m inferred from the InSAR image, and the spatial correspondence of the subtle surface deformations with PT2, a previously mapped out-of-sequence thrust, lead us to explore the role of structural heterogeneities in constraining the rupture progression. We used teleseismic moment inversion of P- and SH-waves, and Coulomb static stress changes to map the slip distribution, and growth of aftershock area, to understand their relation to the thrust systems. Most of the aftershocks were sourced outside the stress shadows (slip >1.65 m) of the April 25 earthquake. The May 12 (Mw 7.3) earthquake that sourced on a contiguous patch coincides with regions of increased stress change and therefore is the first known post-instrumentation example of a late, distant, and large triggered aftershock associated with any large earthquake in the Nepal Himalaya. The present study relates the slip, aftershock productivity, and triggering of unbroken stress barriers, to potential out-of-sequence thrusts, and suggests the role of stress transfer in generating large/great earthquakes.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge funding from the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India, through project sanction MoES/P.O. (Seismo)/I(264)/2015 and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for conducting post-earthquake surveys in Nepal. The authors thank Prof. C.P. Rajendran for discussions and review of the manuscript and Prof. M. Santosh for suggestions to improve Fig. 7. RP thanks Prof. Hiroo Kanamori for discussions on the source models during various stages. We thank the reviewers Prof. Robert Yeats and Prof. Frank Roth for the insightful comments and suggestions that helped structure this paper better. We also thank Prof. Roland Burgmann, Prof. Douglas Dreger, Dr. Ruth Harris, Dr. Nicholas van der Elst, and Prof. Thorne Lay for comments on the poster version of this work at SSA 2016.

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  1. Centre for Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

    Revathy M. Parameswaran & Kusala Rajendran

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  1. Revathy M. Parameswaran
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Correspondence to Kusala Rajendran.

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Figure fs1

Broadband station locations for teleseismic body-wave inversion for the April 25, 2015, Mw 7.8 event. (PDF 1529 kb)

Figure fs2

Broadband station locations for teleseismic body-wave inversion for the May 12, 2015, Mw 7.3 event. (PDF 1530 kb)

Figure fs3

Match between observed (thick) and synthetic (thin) waveforms for the Mw 7.8 earthquake. Top and bottom numbers on the left of each seismogram correspond to the peak amplitude in micrometers and the station azimuth respectively. (PDF 87 kb)

Figure fs4

Match between observed (thick) and synthetic (thin) waveforms for the Mw 7.3 earthquake. Top and bottom numbers on the left of each seismogram correspond to the peak amplitude in micrometers and the station azimuth respectively. (PDF 78 kb)

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Parameswaran, R.M., Rajendran, K. Structural context of the 2015 pair of Nepal earthquakes (Mw 7.8 and Mw 7.3): an analysis based on slip distribution, aftershock growth, and static stress changes. Int J Earth Sci (Geol Rundsch) 106, 1133–1146 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00531-016-1358-4

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