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Volume 54 Supplement 11

Special Issue: Slip and Flow Processes in and below the Seismogenic Region

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Is the plastic flow uniformly distributed below the seismogenic region?

Earth, Planets and Space volume 54, pages 1085–1090 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

The cut-off depth of seismicity in and around the Nojima fault broken by the 1995 Kobe earthquake occurring in the intraplate Japan was compared with a brittle-ductile transition depth of the widely-accepted strength profile model of the crust. It was found that the cut-off depth is much deeper than the transition depth under the assumption that wet granite is deformed at a strain rate of 10−15/s. Such a small strain rate implies that the plastic flow is uniformly distributed below the seismogenic region. When the strain rate is assumed to be greater than 10−13, the cut-off depth can be attributed to the transition depth. This suggests that deformation is localized in a narrow fault zone below the seismogenic region even in the intraplate region.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earthquake Research Institute, the University of Tokyo, Yayoi 1-1-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0032, Japan

    Yoshihisa Iio

  2. Institute for Geoscience, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaragi, 305-0006, Japan

    Yoji Kobayashi

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  1. Yoshihisa Iio
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  2. Yoji Kobayashi
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Correspondence to Yoshihisa Iio.

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Iio, Y., Kobayashi, Y. Is the plastic flow uniformly distributed below the seismogenic region?. Earth Planet Sp 54, 1085–1090 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03353306

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