Masayuki Kano

An adjoint data assimilation method for optimizing frictional parameters on the afterslip area

Afterslip sometimes triggers subsequent earthquakes within a timescale of days to several years. Thus, it may be possible to predict the occurrence of such a triggered earthquake by simulating the spatio-temporal evolution of afterslip with estimated frictional parameters. To demonstrate the feasibility of this idea, we consider a plate interface model where afterslip propagates between two asperities following a rate-and-state friction law, and we adopt an adjoint data assimilation method to optimize frictional parameters. Synthetic observation data are sampled as the slip velocities on the plate interface during 20 days. It is found that: (1) all frictional parameters are optimized if the data sets consists not only of the early phase of afterslip or acceleration, but also of the decaying phase or deceleration; and (2) the prediction of the timing of the triggered earthquake is improved by using adjusted frictional parameters.

Seismic Wavefield Imaging of Long-Period Ground Motion in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, Japan

Long-period ground motions due to large earthquakes can cause devastating disasters, especially in urbanized areas located on sedimentary basins. To assess and mitigate such damage, it is essential to rapidly evaluate seismic hazards for infrastructures, which can be simulated by seismic response analyses that use waveforms at the base of each infrastructure as an input ground motion. The present study reconstructs the seismic wavefield in the Tokyo metropolitan area located on the Kanto sedimentary basin, Japan, from seismograms of the Metropolitan Seismic Observation network (MeSO-net). The obtained wavefield fully explains the observed waveforms in the frequency band of 0.10–0.20 Hz. This is attributed to the seismic wavefield imaging technique proposed by Kano et al. [2017], which implements the replica exchange Monte Carlo method to simultaneously estimate model parameters related to the subsurface structure and source information. Further investigation shows that the reconstructed seismic wavefield lower than 0.30 Hz is of high quality in terms of variance reduction, which quantifies a misfit in waveforms, but that the variance reduction rapidly worsens in higher frequencies. Meanwhile, the velocity response spectra show good agreement with observations up to 0.90 Hz in terms of the combined goodness-of-fit, which is a measure of misfit in the velocity response spectra. Inputting the reconstructed wavefield into seismic response analyses, we can rapidly assess the overall damage to infrastructures immediately after a large earthquake.

Strength of tremor patches along deep transition zone of a megathrust

Deep low frequency tremors are indicators of slow slip transients in the brittle-ductile transition zone along subducting plates. Investigation of comprehensive tremor activities is therefore an important issue for understanding the seismic/aseismic characteristics in transition zones. Here, we focus on the radiated energy from tremors to reveal the along-strike heterogeneity in the strength of tremor patches. Based on a tremor catalog that more accurately evaluates radiated energy, we examine the spatio-temporal activity of tremors accompanied by slow slip events (SSEs) in western Shikoku, southwestern Japan. The new finding of this study is that the energy radiated from tremors is positively correlated with the speed of tremor migration front and the slip rate along the plate interface during a SSE. This can be qualitatively explained by a stress diffusion model, which consists of along-strike heterogeneities in the effective strength of tremor patches embedded in a ductile shear zone. This effective strength heterogeneity is supported by a lateral variation in the stress drop of a SSE; it is consistent with the fluid pressure distribution along the plate boundary fault and the tidal sensitivity of tremors. Accurate evaluation of tremor activities, especially the radiated energy, can be used to infer the spatial distribution of the strength of tremor patches in transition zones worldwide.