Surface Rupture Associated with the 2008 Iwate-Miyagi Nairiku, Japan, Earthquake and its Implications to the Rupture Process and Evaluation of Active Faults

Abstract

The Mjma 7.2 (Mw 6.9) Iwate-Miyagi Nairiku earthquake struck mountainous regions east of volcanic front in northern Honshu. To understand the relation between coseismic surface deformation and the seismogenic faulting and to have lessons in the long-term earthquake forecasting, we have performed urgent field investigations immediately after the main shock, while fragile structure and surface geomorphic features were fresh. More than 13 fault-rupture observations suggest that the estimated total length of the tectonic ground breakages reaches ∼20 km even though their locations are spotty rather than continuous along the entire trend. Contractional features such as thrust fault exposures, flexure, tilting, and buckling deformations predominate on the rupture zone, which is consistent with the reverse faulting under the WNW-ESE compressional stress field in northern Honshu. Such shortening features as well as vertical displacements were visible on cultural features such as concrete, asphalt paved roads, sidewalks, guardrails, drainage ditches, and rice paddies. Amounts of vertical offset and horizontal shortening measured using such cultural piercing points are mostly smaller than 50 cm (∼1 m of net slip). Fractures with such small slip, in turn, would not have been noticeable and may reflect the spotty distribution of the ruptures. Meanwhile, near the southern end of the rupture zone, fault structure and slip sense become complex and measured offsets are exceptionally large. We found a E-W-striking ∼1-km-long continuous rupture involved with 4-to-8-m dextral and 2-to-4-m vertical offsets of a paved road, trails, and rills near a massive giant landslide at the northern rim of the Aratozawa dam reservoir. Terrestrial LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) measurements together with our field observations reveal typical features of strike-slip faulting such as mole tracks, fissures, pressure ridges, bulges, and shutter ridges as well as the offset rills and ridges. Detail mapping of the ruptures suggests that this strike-slip dominant fault is a lateral ramp or tear fault that connects two distinct NNE-trending thrust faults, although we cannot rule out the possibility of a large mass movement due to gravitational force to induce such large displacements without suffcient geodetic and geologic data. The mapped zone of the ruptures approximately locates along the central part of the surface projection of a ∼40-km-long west-dipping source fault and associated aftershock zone. It also well corresponds to an asperity estimated from seismic and geodetic inversions, particularly southern end of the ground breakage zone. However, from the viewpoint of the long-term predictability, the surface fracturing occurred where none of active faults was previously mapped. Although several active geomorphic strands are likely to have reoccupied with the 2008 event, they are more spotty than the 2008 ruptures. Thus it would not have allowed us to properly evaluate size of the shock and entire extension of the rupture.