Roger D Bilham

Intensity, Magnitude, Location, and Attenuation in India for Felt Earthquakes since 1762

A comprehensive, consistently interpreted new catalog of felt intensities for India (Martin and Szeliga, 2010, this issue) includes intensities for 570 earth- quakes; instrumental magnitudes and locations are available for 100 of these events. We use the intensity values for 29 of the instrumentally recorded events to develop new intensity versus attenuation relations for the Indian subcontinent and the Himalayan region. We then use these relations to determine the locations and mag- nitudes of 234 historical events, using the method of Bakun and Wentworth (1997). For the remaining 336 events, intensity distributions are too sparse to determine mag- nitude or location. We evaluate magnitude and location accuracy of newly located events by comparing the instrumental- with the intensity-derived location for 29 cali- bration events, for which more than 15 intensity observations are available. With few exceptions, most intensity-derived locations lie within a fault length of the instrumen- tally determined location. For events in which the azimuthal distribution of intensities is limited, we conclude that the formal error bounds from the regression of Bakun and Wentworth (1997) do not reflect the true uncertainties. We also find that the regression underestimates the uncertainties of the location and magnitude of the 1819 Allah Bund earthquake, for which a location has been inferred from mapped surface deformation. Comparing our inferred attenuation relations to those developed for other regions, we find that attenuation for Himalayan events is comparable to intensity attenuation in California (Bakun and Wentworth, 1997), while intensity attenuation for cratonic events is higher than intensity attenuation reported for central/eastern North America (Bakun et al., 2003). Further, we present evidence that intensities of intraplate earth- quakes have a nonlinear dependence on magnitude such that attenuation relations based largely on small-to-moderate earthquakes may significantly overestimate the magnitudes of historical earthquakes.

The 26 January 2001 M 7.6 Bhuj, India, Earthquake: Observed and Predicted Ground Motions

Although local and regional instrumental recordings of the devastating 26, January 2001, Bhuj earthquake are sparse, the distribution of macroseismic effects can provide important constraints on the mainshock ground motions. We compiled available news accounts describing damage and other effects and interpreted them to obtain modified Mercalli intensities (MMIs) at >200 locations throughout the Indian subcontinent. These values are then used to map the intensity distribution throughout the subcontinent using a simple mathematical interpolation method. Although preliminary, the maps reveal several interesting features. Within the Kachchh region, the most heavily damaged villages are concentrated toward the western edge of the inferred fault, consistent with western directivity. Significant sediment-induced amplification is also suggested at a number of locations around the Gulf of Kachchh to the south of the epicenter. Away from the Kachchh region, intensities were clearly amplified significantly in areas that are along rivers, within deltas, or on coastal alluvium, such as mudflats and salt pans. In addition, we use fault-rupture parameters inferred from teleseismic data to predict shaking intensity at distances of 0–1000 km. We then convert the predicted hard-rock ground-motion parameters to MMI by using a relationship (derived from Internet-based intensity surveys) that assigns MMI based on the average effects in a region. The predicted MMIs are typically lower by 1–3 units than those estimated from news accounts, although they do predict near-field ground motions of approximately 80%g and potentially damaging ground motions on hard-rock sites to distances of approximately 300 km. For the most part, this discrepancy is consistent with the expected effect of sediment response, but it could also reflect other factors, such as unusually high building vulnerability in the Bhuj region and a tendency for media accounts to focus on the most dramatic damage, rather than the average effects. The discrepancy may also be partly attributable to the inadequacy of the empirical relationship between MMI and peak ground acceleration (PGA), when applied to India. The MMI–PGA relationship was developed using data from California earthquakes, which might have a systematically different stress drop and therefore, a different frequency content than intraplate events. When a relationship between response spectra and MMI is used, we obtain larger predicted MMI values, in better agreement with the observations.

Postseismic relaxation in Kashmir and lateral variations in crustal architecture and materials

Thirty horizontal displacement time series from GPS sites in the area around the 2005 Kashmir earthquake show lateral spatial variations in displacement magnitude and relaxation time for the postseismic interval from 2005 to 2012. The observed spatial pattern of surface displacements can only be reproduced by finite element models of postseismic deformation in elastic over viscoelastic crust that include lateral differences in both the thickness of the elastic layer and the viscosity of the viscoelastic layer. Solutions reproducing the sign of horizontal displacements everywhere in the epicentral region also require afterslip on the portion of the fault dislocation in the viscoelastic layer but not in the elastic lid. Although there are substantial tradeoffs among contributions to postseismic displacements of the surface, the observations preclude both crustal homogeneity and shallow afterslip. In the best family of solutions, the thickness of the elastic upper crust differs by a factor of 5 and the viscosity of the middle and lower crust by an order of magnitude between domains north and south of a suture zone containing the Main Boundary Thrust and Main Mantle Thrust.

A media-based assessment of damage and ground motions from the January 26th, 2001 M 7.6 Bhuj, India earthquake

We compiled available news and internet accounts of damage and other effects from the 26th January, 2001, Bhuj earthquake, and interpreted them to obtain modified Mercalli intensities at over 200 locations throughout the Indian subcontinent. These values are used to map the intensity distribution using a simple mathematical interpolation method. The maps reveal several interesting features. Within the Kachchh region, the most heavily damaged villages are concentrated towards the western edge of the inferred fault, consistent with western directivity. Significant sedimentinduced amplification is also suggested at a number of locations around the Gulf of Kachchh to the south of the epicenter. Away from the Kachchh region intensities were clearly amplified significantly in areas that are along rivers, within deltas, or on coastal alluvium such as mud flats and salt pans. In addition we use fault rupture parameters inferred from teleseismic data to predict shaking intensity at distances of 0–1000 km. We then convert the predicted hard rock ground motion parameters to MMI using a relationship (derived from internet-based intensity surveys) that assigns MMI based on the average effects in a region. The predicted MMIs are typically lower by 1–2 units than those estimated from news accounts. This discrepancy is generally consistent with the expected effect of sediment response, but it could also reflect other factors such as a tendency for media accounts to focus on the most dramatic damage, rather than the average effects. Our modeling results also suggest, however, that the Bhuj earthquake generated more high-frequency shaking than is expected for earthquakes of similar magnitude in California, and may therefore have been especially damaging.