Since then giant earthquakes have been thought to be possible on any large fault. In the new paper UO researchers show that the maximum size of earthquakes may be controlled by another parameter: the fault curvature. The way people in the science community think about earthquakes is that some fault areas resist failure more than others, and when they break they generate large earthquakes, said lead author Quentin Bletery, a postdoctoral researcher at the UO. What I found is the opposite of what I expected: Very large earthquakes occur on fault areas where the slope is the most regular, or flat.
The rupture threshold is more homogeneous along flat faults, allowing larger fault areas to rupture simultaneously, the researchers said. Based on the average curvature inside the giant earthquake rupture areas, the researchers concluded that the likelihood that mega-earthquakes are linked to fault curvatures is more than 99 percent.
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February 2017
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