Erosion may trigger earthquakes

The work is published in Nature Communications on 21 November 2014.

Over the last few decades, many studies have focused on the evolution of mountain range landscapes over geological time (1 to 100 million years). The aim is to better understand the dynamics and interactions between erosion, sedimentation and tectonic deformation processes. Recent work has shown that Earth's surface can undergo major changes in just a few days, months or years, for instance during extreme events such as typhoons or high magnitude earthquakes. Such events cause many landslides and an increase in sedimentary transport into rivers, as was the case in 2009 when typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan, leading to abrupt erosion of landscapes. Such rapid changes to the shape of Earth's surface alter the balance of forces at the site of deep active faults.

In Taiwan, where erosion and deformation rates are among the highest in the world, the researchers showed that erosion rates of the order of 0.1 to 20 millimeters per year can cause an increase of the order of 0.1 to 10 bar in stresses on faults located nearby. Such forces are probably enough to trigger shallow earthquakes (less than five kilometers deep) or to favor the rupture of deep earthquakes up to the surface, especially if they are amplified by extreme erosion events caused by typhoons and high magnitude earthquakes. The researchers have thus shown that plate tectonics is not the only persistent mechanism able to influence the activity of seismic faults, and that surface processes such as erosion and sedimentation can increase stresses on active faults sufficiently to cause shallow earthquakes.

Thanks to an analysis of the relationships between surface processes and active deformation of Earth in near real-time, this study provides new perspectives for understanding the mechanisms that trigger earthquakes.

*The Géosciences Rennes laboratory is part of the Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers de Rennes.