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Title: Stronger Peak Ground Motion, Beyond the Threshold to Initiate a Response, Does Not Lead to Larger Stream Discharge Responses to Earthquakes

Abstract

The impressive number of stream gauges in Chile, combined with a suite of past and recent large earthquakes, makes Chile a unique natural laboratory to study several streams that recorded responses to multiple seismic events. Here we document changes in discharge in eight streams in Chile following two or more large earthquakes. In all cases, discharge increases. Changes in discharge occur for peak ground velocities greater than about 7–11 cm/s. Above that threshold, the magnitude of both the increase in discharge and the total excess water do not increase with increasing peak ground velocities. While these observations are consistent with previous work in California, they conflict with lab experiments that show that the magnitude of permeability changes increases with increasing amplitude of ground motion. Instead, our study suggests that streamflow responses are binary.

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3]
  1. Univ. of Potsdam (Germany). Inst. of Earth and Environmental Sciences
  2. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Earth and Planetary Science
  3. U.S. Geological Survey, Golden, CO (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE; National Science Foundation (NSF)
OSTI Identifier:
1479427
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231; EAR1344424
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Geophysical Research Letters
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 45; Journal Issue: 13; Journal ID: ISSN 0094-8276
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
58 GEOSCIENCES; earthquake; streamflow; shaking; Chile; modeling

Citation Formats

Mohr, Christian H., Manga, Michael, and Wald, David. Stronger Peak Ground Motion, Beyond the Threshold to Initiate a Response, Does Not Lead to Larger Stream Discharge Responses to Earthquakes. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.1029/2018GL078621.
Mohr, Christian H., Manga, Michael, & Wald, David. Stronger Peak Ground Motion, Beyond the Threshold to Initiate a Response, Does Not Lead to Larger Stream Discharge Responses to Earthquakes. United States. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078621
Mohr, Christian H., Manga, Michael, and Wald, David. Thu . "Stronger Peak Ground Motion, Beyond the Threshold to Initiate a Response, Does Not Lead to Larger Stream Discharge Responses to Earthquakes". United States. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078621. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1479427.
@article{osti_1479427,
title = {Stronger Peak Ground Motion, Beyond the Threshold to Initiate a Response, Does Not Lead to Larger Stream Discharge Responses to Earthquakes},
author = {Mohr, Christian H. and Manga, Michael and Wald, David},
abstractNote = {The impressive number of stream gauges in Chile, combined with a suite of past and recent large earthquakes, makes Chile a unique natural laboratory to study several streams that recorded responses to multiple seismic events. Here we document changes in discharge in eight streams in Chile following two or more large earthquakes. In all cases, discharge increases. Changes in discharge occur for peak ground velocities greater than about 7–11 cm/s. Above that threshold, the magnitude of both the increase in discharge and the total excess water do not increase with increasing peak ground velocities. While these observations are consistent with previous work in California, they conflict with lab experiments that show that the magnitude of permeability changes increases with increasing amplitude of ground motion. Instead, our study suggests that streamflow responses are binary.},
doi = {10.1029/2018GL078621},
journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
number = 13,
volume = 45,
place = {United States},
year = {Thu Jun 21 00:00:00 EDT 2018},
month = {Thu Jun 21 00:00:00 EDT 2018}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record

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Cited by: 7 works
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Figures / Tables:

Figure 1 Figure 1: Geographical setting of catchments (white polygons) and sample hydrographs. (a) Ground motion expressed as peak ground velocity for the M8.8 Maule earthquake, overlain on Shuttle Radar Topography Mission topography; bathymetry from Google Earth. (b and c) More detailed view of the clustered catchments that responded to multiple earthquakes.more » Sample hydrographs (d) showing postseismic increases in stream discharge. The blue dotted line is measured streamflow discharge (m3/ s); histogram shows precipitation (mm/d) if data are available and rainfall occurred. The red and orange curves are fits from modeled streamflow discharge (m3/s; equation 3). The red curve (model 1) depicts the response to an individual model fit, the orange curve (model 2), instead, considers the mean permeability values of streams responding to multiple earthquakes. The black dashed line indicates the time of the earthquakes.« less

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