Cascadia Subduction Zone Fault Heterogeneities From Newly Detected Small Magnitude Earthquakes

Abstract

AbstractThe Cascadia subduction zone (CSZ) is known to host M9 megathrust ruptures; however, no such event has occurred in historical observation. The distribution and characteristics of small‐ to moderate‐sized earthquakes can be used to determine the behavior of the megathrust fault but are notably absent offshore the CSZ due to the distance from onshore seismometers. We use automated subspace detection coupled with an onshore‐offshore seismic deployment to find small‐magnitude earthquakes in the offshore seismogenic zone and analyze their locations in the context of interseismic locking and seismogenic zone extent. We detected and located 5,282 earthquakes, 4,096 of which had been previously undetected. We find that the downdip extent of the seismogenic zone as defined by interplate seismicity agrees with the 20% locking contour of the Schmalzle et al. (2014, https://doi.org/10.1002/2013GC005172) geodetic model and extends deeper than predicted by previous thermal models. We cannot determine the updip extent of the seismogenic zone; this may be due to a lack of templates for detection in the updip source area, stress shadows updip of asperity loading, and/or strong locking to the trench. We present a map of possible asperities determined by the small earthquakes in this study. Our asperity locations and extents show some, but not complete, agreement with the asperities modeled from the 1700 M9 rupture and geodetic locking models, and good agreement with the paleo‐rupture extents determined from offshore turbidites and forearc basin‐based asperity estimates. This highlights the need of continued offshore observations over time, and to elucidate fine‐scale variation in locking.