Earthquake slip leads to stress relaxation in the crust, whereas healing of the damage induced by strong ground motion predominantly occurs in the near-surface. Temporal changes in the seismic velocity structure after large earthquakes can be driven by diverse mechanisms, such as aseismic slip or fault zone healing, but the timescales governing these processes are very similar, making them difficult to distinguish. We detect temporal velocity changes in the crust since the great 2004 Sumatra and 2005 Nias earthquakes using the high-frequency late-arriving scattered waves after the S phase and long-period Rayleigh waves of repeating earthquakes. We find that the temporal velocity changes in the scattered waves exhibit steady logarithmic recovery from 2005 to 2015, whereas the Rayleigh-wave velocity recovery was interrupted by several large earthquakes after late 2007. The difference between these two temporal trends in velocity change is the key to distinguishing between a damage/healing/re-damage cycle near the surface and slow deformation (e.g., afterslip, post-seismic relaxation) at depth. Rayleigh waves are highly sensitive to the near-surface damage and healing after the 2004/2005 events, and also the repeated damage induced by the 2007 and 2008 earthquakes. Steady velocity recovery of the scattered waves primarily corresponds to slow deformation at depth.
Full Article:
Yu, W., J. T. Lin, J. Su, T. R. A. Song and C. C. Kang, (2020), S Coda and Rayleigh Waves From a Decade of Repeating Earthquakes Reveal Discordant Temporal Velocity Changes Since the 2004 Sumatra Earthquake, Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth 125(7)
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JB019794