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Published Online May 8, 2003
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1084783

Reports

Submitted on March 21, 2003
Accepted on April 29, 2003

Episodic Tremor and Slip on the Cascadia Subduction Zone: The Chatter of Silent Slip

Garry Rogers 1* Herb Dragert 1

1 Geological Survey of Canada, Pacific Geoscience Centre, 9860 West Saanich Road, Sidney, British Columbia, Canada V8L 4B2.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rogers{at}pgc.nrcan.gc.ca.

Repeated slow slip events observed on the deeper interface of the northern Cascadia subduction zone, at first thought to be silent, have now been found to have unique, non-earthquake, seismic signatures. Tremor-like seismic signals have been found to correlate temporally and spatially with slip events identified from crustal motion data spanning the past six years. During the period between slips, tremor activity is minor or non-existent. We call this associated tremor and slip phenomenon Episodic Tremor and Slip (ETS) and propose that ETS activity can be used as a real-time indicator of stress loading of the Cascadia megathrust earthquake zone.


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