Pre- and post-seismic slow slip surrounding the 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake rupture
Uchida, N., and T. Matsuzawa, Pre- and post-seismic slow slip surrounding the 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake rupture, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 374, 81-91, doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2013.05.021, 2013.
We estimate cumulative offsets of small repeating earthquakes that are interpreted to reflect the in situ aseismic slip history on the subduction zone offshore northeastern Japan. These data reveal contrasting aseismic slip patterns between the coseismic rupture area of the Mw 9.0 Tohoku-oki earthquake and surrounding portions of the subduction thrust.

Figure: Comparison of pre- and post-seismic slip in and around the coseismic slip area for the 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake. The rupture area show ~3 years of slip-rate increases preceding the earthquake, and the slip stopped almost completely after the earthquake (right top). The region surrounding the rupture area exhibited relatively high aseismic fault slip rates before the earthquake and clear postseismic slip following the main shock (right bottom).
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