Shallow slow earthquakes to decipher future catastrophic earthquakes in the Guerrero seismic gap

The Guerrero seismic gap, a major source of seismic and tsunami hazard along the Mexican subduction zone, has been studied using newly deployed instruments to better characterize the extent of the seismogenic zone. This research reports the discovery of episodic shallow tremors and potential slow slip events offshore Guerrero. Their distribution, alongside repeating earthquakes, seismicity, residual gravity, and bathymetry, suggests stable slip on a portion of the shallow plate interface. This might explain the gap's long return period of large earthquakes and why past ruptures haven't propagated into it. However, dynamic rupture effects from nearby earthquakes could break through the entire Guerrero seismic gap.

R. Plata-Martinez, S. Ide, M. Shinohara, E. S. Garcia, N. Mizuno, L. A. Dominguez, T. Taira, Y. Yamashita, A. Toh, T. Yamada, J. Real, A. Husker, V. M. Cruz-Atienza, Y. Ito