Do Subducted Seamounts Act as Weak Asperities?

The additional work of ploughing makes seamounts more resistant to subduction and more strongly coupled than smoother areas. Nevertheless, the idea that subducted seamounts are weakly coupled and slip aseismically has become dominant in the last decade. This idea is primarily based on the claim that a seamount being subducted in the southern Japan Trench behaves this way. The key element in this assertion is that large M similar to 7 earthquakes that abut the leading edge of the seamount require that the seamount be aseismically sliding to initiate them. More recent observations show instead that the surrounding region is aseismically sliding while the seamount acts as a stationary buttress. Here we re-examine this case and model it with both weak and strong asperity assumptions. Our modeling results show that only a strong asperity model can produce this type of earthquake. Strong asperities also rupture the seamount in great earthquakes with long recurrence times. This provides the previously unknown source for a series of great tsunami earthquakes that have occurred along the southern Japan Trench, the most recent being the 1677 M8.3-8.6 Enpo Boso-oki tsunami earthquake. The weak asperity hypothesis is thus found to be false in this foundational example.

Automated summary

In the last decade, the dominant view has been that subducted seamounts are weakly coupled and slip aseismically. However, recent observations have shown that the seamounts actually act as stationary buttresses while the surrounding region slides aseismically. This contradicts previous understanding and proves the weak asperity hypothesis false.