Stable Forearc Stressed by a Weak Megathrust: Mechanical and Geodynamic Implications of Stress Changes Caused by the M = 9 Tohoku‐Oki Earthquake
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Rupture‐zone averaged static stress drop in the 2011 M=9 Tohoku‐Oki earthquake was less than 5 MPa, but it caused a stress reversal in most of the offshore forearc, although the reversal is less well constrained far offshore by earthquake mechanisms because of 20‐ to 30‐km errors in event depths. Using a finite element model of force balance, we demonstrate that the stress reversal unambiguously indicates (1) a very weak subduction megathrust and (2) very low differential stresses in the forearc. Prior to the reversal, the upper limit of megathrust strength could not be determined from forearc stresses. In the forearc, effects of megathrust friction and gravity are in a fragile balance, and stresses fluctuate around a neutral state in earthquake cycles. If most of the offshore forearc is to be compressive before but extensional after the earthquake, the effective friction coefficient of the megathrust must be ~0.032. Under low differential stresses associated with megathrust weakness, the forearc is generally well below yielding. Applying the concepts of dynamic Coulomb wedge, we show that the inner wedge, and by inference farther landward, stays stable throughout earthquake cycles. The outer wedge is stable most of the time but may occasionally enter a critical state during great earthquakes; its geometry suggests that complete stress drop of the underlying shallow megathrust is unlikely to have happened. We reason that the occurrence of earthquakes and active faulting under low stress in the stable forearc is due to heterogeneities in structure, stress, and/or pore fluid pressure.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".