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Nepal earthquake: Waiting for the complete rupture
[...] "In the 2015 quake, there was only a partial rupture of the major Himalayan fault separating the two continental plates. The frontal, near-surface section of the rupture zone, where the Indian Plate subducts beneath the Eurasian Plate, did not slip and remains under stress," explains Dal Zilio, lead author of the study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
Normally, a major earthquake releases almost all the stress that has built up in the vicinity of the focus as a result of displacement of the plates. "Our model shows that, although the Gorkha earthquake reduced the stress level in part of the rupture zone, tension actually increased in the frontal section close to the foot of the Himalayas. The apparent paradox is that 'medium-sized' earthquakes such as Gorkha can create the conditions for an even larger earthquake," says Dal Zilio.
Tremors of the magnitude of the Gorkha earthquake release stress only in the deeper subsections of the fault system over lengths of 100 kilometres. In turn, new and even greater stress builds up in the near-surface sections of the rupture zone.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday January 28 2019, @10:20PM
I wish I had been made aware of it much earlier in life. My high school teacher did not present much info on bigger picture geology, but concentrated mostly on the sort of lab stuff that field geologists sort of despise. I never paid attention until I was near 40 and visited Death valley.
There are major faults that have not had "release" from earthquakes in the US, not the least of which is the Hayward fault near San Francisco. The boundary where the Pacific Plate is sliding against the North American Plate is not the San Andreas Fault, that is only the most prominent fault in about a 50 mile wide series of parallel faults. All of them are under some level of pressure. There is also the spreading center apparently forming with current boundaries in the west at the Sierra Nevada and in the east somewhere probably in Utah. All of these things will have disastrous consequences for whatever organisms call that area when the big blows hit, but it could be tomorrow or it could be millions of years from now. Might as well eat, drink and be merry.