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Originally published in Science Express on 21 October 2004
Science 12 November 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5699, pp. 1164 - 1166
DOI: 10.1126/science.1103961
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Reports

Earth Tides Can Trigger Shallow Thrust Fault Earthquakes

Elizabeth S. Cochran,1* John E. Vidale,1 Sachiko Tanaka2{dagger}

We show a correlation between the occurrence of shallow thrust earthquakes and the occurrence of the strongest tides. The rate of earthquakes varies from the background rate by a factor of 3 with the tidal stress. The highest correlation is found when we assume a coefficient of friction of µ = 0.4 for the crust, although we see good correlation for µ between 0.2 and 0.6. Our results quantify the effect of applied stress on earthquake triggering, a key factor in understanding earthquake nucleation and cascades whereby one earthquake triggers others.

1 Department of Earth and Space Sciences and Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
2 Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8578, Japan.



{dagger} Present address: National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED), Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305, Japan.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cochran{at}moho.ess.ucla.edu

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