Changes in the b value in and around the focal areas of the M6.9 and M6.8 earthquakes off the coast of Miyagi prefecture, Japan, in 2021

TL;DR

This study analyzes changes in the b value of the Gutenberg-Richter law around the 2021 Miyagi earthquakes, revealing high-stress conditions prior to the quakes and spatial variations in stress distribution.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the spatial and temporal variations of the b value before and after the 2021 Miyagi earthquakes, linking stress levels to seismic activity.

Findings

Small b values indicated high differential stress before the earthquakes.

The ruptured areas coincided with regions of persistently small b values.

Stress in the eastern region remained low, as shown by large b values.

Abstract

We investigated changes in the b value of the Gutenberg-Richter's law in and around the focal areas of earthquakes on March 20 and on May 1, 2021, with magnitude (M) 6.9 and 6.8, respectively, which occurred off the Pacific coast of Miyagi prefecture, northeastern Japan. We showed that the b value in these focal areas had been noticeably small, especially within a few years before the occurrence of the M6.9 earthquake in its vicinity, indicating that differential stress had been high in the focal areas. The coseismic slip of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake seems to have stopped just short of the east side of the focus of the M6.9 earthquake. Furthermore, the afterslip of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake was relatively small in the focal areas of the M6.9 and M6.8 earthquakes, compared to the surrounding regions. In addition, the focus of the M6.9 earthquake was situated close to the border point where the interplate slip in the period from 2012 through 2021 has been considerably larger on the northern side than on the southern side. The high-stress state inferred by the b-value analysis is concordant with those characteristics of interplate slip events. We found that the M6.8 earthquake on May 1 occurred near an area where the b value remained small, even after the M6.9 quake. The ruptured areas by the two earthquakes now seem to almost coincide with the small-b-value region that had existed before their occurrence. The b value on the east side of the focal areas of the M6.9 and M6.8 earthquakes which corresponds to the eastern part of the source region of the 1978 off-Miyagi prefecture earthquake was consistently large, while the seismicity enhanced by the two earthquakes also shows a large b value, implying that stress in the region has not been very high.