Faulting process of the August 8, 1993, Guam earthquake: A thrust event in an otherwise weakly coupled subduction zone

We study a large M_w = 7.7 earthquake that occurred on June 8, 1993, slightly offshore and under the island of Guam in the southern Mariana island arc. From a complete study of P and SH body waves, a relocation of the aftershocks, and the subevents of the main shock, we propose a relatively simple model of the rupture process of this event. We propose that this earthquake ruptured a shallow-dipping thrust fault that corresponds to the subduction interface under Guam. Like many other earthquakes, this event started with a small foreshock and was followed by two large energy release events located to the northeast of the epicenter along the subduction zone. The rupture process had a relatively short duration of about 32 s, with a weak starting phase that lasted about 8 s. Seismic moments estimated from body waves, surface waves, and Global Positioning System (GPS) are very similar of the order of 4.5 × 10²⁰ N m. The displacement field produced by our best model was compared to the GPS measurements of coseismic slip obtained by Beavan et al. [1994]. We find an excellent agreement both in displacement direction and magnitude between the predicted and observed GPS displacements. This appears to be then the largest earthquake to have occurred on a shallow-dipping thrust fault in the Mariana subduction zone during this century. Its occurrence requires a reassessment of the concept of seismic coupling in this subduction zone.