Articles | Volume 16, issue 7
https://doi.org/10.5194/se-16-593-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/se-16-593-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
02 Jul 2025
Research article |
| 02 Jul 2025
| 02 Jul 2025
Importance of forearc topography for the triggering of aftershocks of megathrust earthquakes: insights from mechanical models and the Tohoku-Oki and Maule earthquakes
Armin Dielforder
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Institut für Erdsystemwissenschaften, Abteilung Geologie, Leibniz Universität Hannover, 30167 Hannover, Germany
now at: Institut für Geographie und Geologie, Universität Greifswald, 17489 Greifswald, Germany
Gian Maria Bocchini
Institut für Geowissenschaften, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44801 Bochum, Germany
Andrea Hampel
Institut für Erdsystemwissenschaften, Abteilung Geologie, Leibniz Universität Hannover, 30167 Hannover, Germany
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Gian Maria Bocchini, Emanuele Bozzi, Marco P. Roth, Sonja Gaviano, Giulio Pascucci, Francesco Grigoli, Ettore Biondi, Efthimios Sokos, and Rebecca M. Harrington
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-715, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-715, 2026
Preprint under review for ESSD
Short summary
Short summary
This study uses two weeks of new distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) data with permanent seismic stations to construct a detailed catalog of small earthquakes around Kefalonia Island (Greece). The analysis revealed thousands of tiny events, many clustered offshore northwest of Kefalonia. The publicly available dataset, including the catalog and continuous DAS waveforms, supports testing of new DAS methods and analysis of complex seismic sequences.
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Short summary
Subduction zones feature a large elevation difference between the deep oceanic trench and the high mountains on land, which causes stress in the upper plate. We investigate how the topographic stress affects the aftershock seismicity of large subduction earthquakes using analytical and numerical stress models. We show that topographic stress has a large influence on aftershock seismicity and promoted most of the seismicity after the Tohoku-Oki (Japan) and Maule (Chile) earthquakes.
Subduction zones feature a large elevation difference between the deep oceanic trench and the...
