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Stress-driven recurrence and precursory moment-rate surge in caldera collapse earthquakes

Nature Geoscience volume 17, pages 264–269 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Predicting the recurrence times of earthquakes and understanding the physical processes that immediately precede them are two outstanding problems in seismology. Although geodetic measurements record elastic strain accumulation, most faults have recurrence intervals longer than available measurements. Foreshocks provide the principal observations of processes before mainshocks, but variability between sequences limits generalizations of pre-failure behaviour. Here we analyse seismicity and deformation data for highly characteristic caldera collapse earthquakes from 2018 Kīlauea Volcano (Hawaii, USA), with a mean recurrence interval of 1.4 days. These events provide a unique test of stress-induced earthquake recurrence and document processes preceding mainshocks with magnitude greater than five. We show that recurrence intervals are well predicted by stress histories inferred from near-field deformation measurements and that cycle-averaged seismicity reveals a critical phase, minutes before mainshocks, where earthquakes grew larger and seismic moment rate surged dramatically. The average moment rate in the final 15 minutes (0.7% of the mean cycle duration) was 4.75 times the background, a highly significant change. We infer that as the average stress increased, ruptures were more likely to overcome geometric barriers and grow larger, leading to characteristic, whole-fault ruptures. These findings imply that stress heterogeneity influences both earthquake nucleation and growth, including on potentially hazardous tectonic faults.

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Fig. 1: Summary of observations.
Fig. 2: Test of inter-event recurrence times.
Fig. 3: Magnitude as a function of time to mainshock.
Fig. 4: Changes in earthquake behaviour before mainshocks.
Fig. 5: Schematic illustration of the effect of stress heterogeneity on earthquake nucleation and rupture extent.

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Data availability

GNSS data are available from the UNAVCO archive (https://www.unavco.org/data/data.html). Seismic data are from the USGS HVO (https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/HV). Data can be accessed at http://ds.iris.edu/mda/HV. Any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Ellsworth for helpful discussions, A. Flinders and N. Van Der Elst of the USGS for internal reviews and W. Marzocchi for improving the manuscript. This study was supported by the National Science Foundation EAR-2040425 (P.S.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geophysics Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Paul Segall & Taiyi A. Wang

  2. Walden Consulting, Pittsfield, MA, USA

    Mark V. Matthews

  3. Geologic Hazards Science Center, US Geological Survey, Golden, CO, USA

    David R. Shelly

  4. Volcano Science Center, US Geological Survey, Moffett Field, CA, USA

    Kyle R. Anderson

Authors
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Contributions

P.S.: conceptualization, methodology, writing—original draft, supervision. M.V.M.: data analysis, statistical computations, modelling and interpretation, contributions to writing and editing. D.R.S.: earthquake location and catalogue analysis, editing. T.A.W.: analyses of time/spectral-domain comparisons between VT and VLP events, editing. K.R.A.: analysis of geodetic data, editing.

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Correspondence to Paul Segall.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Comparison of velocity waveforms from closely located VT and VLP earthquakes.

a, map view of Kīlauea summit, with VT and VLP epicenters, as well as three broadband stations. b,c,d, first 10 seconds of vertical velocity seismograms at stations STCD, MLOD, HLPD. VLP time shifted to match VT.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Comparison of closely located VT and VLP vertical component spectrograms at station MLOD.

a, VT b, VLP.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Cumulative seismic moment in the final 15 minute stacked catalog.

Moments are multiples of the moment of an M = 2.4 event, which is 4.47 × 1012 Nm. Red line shows exponential fit.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Mainshock epicentral regions are active in the 30 minutes prior to mainshocks.

Epicenters of earthquakes in 26 of the last 29 collapse cycles. (26 depicted VLP locations are from Shelly and Thelen (2019). Three VLPs locations, in Cycles 34, 41, and 46, are not available in the Shelley-Thelen catalog.) Epicenters colored by time to collapse. Light blue: background time to failure > 30 minutes, dark blue: last 30 minutes; red stars mainshocks epicenters. Note that nearly all mainshocks are preceded by nearby VT events in the final 30 minutes, supporting the hypothesis that mainshocks are runaway VT earthquakes.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Discussion, Figs. 1–5 and Table 1.

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Segall, P., Matthews, M.V., Shelly, D.R. et al. Stress-driven recurrence and precursory moment-rate surge in caldera collapse earthquakes. Nat. Geosci. 17, 264–269 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01372-3

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