Evidence of Changes of Seismic Properties in the Entire Crust Beneath Japan After the Mw 9.0, 2011 Tohoku-oki Earthquake

Abstract

Studies of mechanical responses of the Earth crust to large earthquakes can provide us with unique insights into the processes of stress buildup and release. As a complement to geodetic methods that derive crustal strain dynamics from surface observations (e.g., GPS, InSAR), noise-based seismic velocity monitoring directly probes the mechanical state of the crust, at depth and continuously in time. We investigate the responses of the crust to the Mw 9.0, 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake. In addition to the Hi-net short-period sensors, we use Hi-net tiltmeters as long-period seismometers (8–50 s) to sample the crust below 5 km in depth. The spatial distribution of the strong velocity decreases at short periods appears to be limited to the region of strong ground shaking induced by the 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake, while the long-period velocity changes correlate well with the modeled static strain induced by viscoelastic relaxation and afterslip at depth. Amplitudes of coseismic velocity changes decrease with increasing depth. The temporal evolution of velocity changes in different period bands shows that the maximum drops in the velocity at long periods are delayed in time with respect to the occurrence of the Tohoku-oki earthquake. The inversion of seismic velocity changes at depth illustrates how S wave velocities evolve down to 40 km at a regional scale after a major earthquake.