Triggered earthquakes give insight into changes below Earth’s surface
It is well known that an earthquake in one part of the world can trigger others thousands of kilometers away. But in a paper published in the journal Science Advances, researchers reveal that these triggered earthquakes are just one outward sign of far more widespread changes taking place below the Earth’s surface. Earthquakes can fundamentally change the elastic properties of the Earth’s crust in regions up to 6,000 kilometers away, altering its ability to withstand stresses for a period of up to a few weeks, according to Kevin Chao, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and a member of a research team led by Andrew Delorey at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The research demonstrates that the Earth is a dynamic and interconnected system, where one large earthquake can create a cascading sequence of events thousands of kilometers away, Chao says. Earthquakes occur when stress builds up along a tectonic...