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Published February 28, 2020 | Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

Segmentation of the Main Himalayan Thrust Illuminated by Bayesian Inference of Interseismic Coupling

Abstract

We use a recent compilation of geodetic data of surface displacements in a fully Bayesian approach to derive a probabilistic estimate of interseismic coupling along the Main Himalayan Thrust (MHT). Our probabilistic estimate of interseismic coupling highlights four large, highly coupled patches separated by three potential barriers of low coupling. Locked patches overlap with estimated rupture areas of historical large earthquakes over the past centuries. The coincident spatial variability in coupling, seismicity, and prominent active topography suggests a structural segmentation of the MHT imposed by inherited tectonic structures from the India‐Eurasia collision. This correlation implies that inherited tectonic structures may affect how stress builds up along the MHT, thereby influencing the location and size of large Himalayan earthquakes and the growth of the mountain range.

Additional Information

© 2020 American Geophysical Union. Received 27 NOV 2019; Accepted 6 FEB 2020; Accepted article online 10 FEB 2020. Work for this article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement: 758210—Geo4D). L. D. Z. was supported by the SNSF 2‐77090‐14 project Swiss‐AlpArray SINERGIA and the Cecil and Sally Drinkward Postdoctoral Scholar at Caltech. We thank V. L. Stevens, J.‐P. Avouac, G. Hetény, M. Simons, L. Bollinger, C. Pranger, A. Gualandi, K. Wang, and S. Michel for constructive comments and discussions. We are grateful to G. Hetény for providing us with GMT scripts to plot Figure 1 and the Arc‐Parallel Topography Anomalies (Hetényi et al., 2016). We thank the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for providing insightful comments that helped to improve the quality of this paper. Data related to this paper can be downloaded from the following link: https://doi.org/10.22002/d1.1317 Author Contributions: L. D. Z. and R. J. conceived the research, designed the study, performed and analyzed the fault modeling, and wrote the manuscript. Y. v. D. commented on the analysis. All authors took part in finalizing the manuscript.

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Published - 2019GL086424.pdf

Supplemental Material - grl60232-sup-0001-figure_si-s01.pdf

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