Investigating the Importance of 3D Structure & Topography in Seismic Deformation Modeling: Case Study of the April 2015 Nepal Earthquake

In recent years, observations of deformation at plate boundaries have been greatly improved by the development of techniques in space geodesy. However, models of seismic deformation remain limited and are unable to account for realistic 3D structure in topography and material properties. We demonstrate the importance of 3D structure using a spectral-element method that incorporates fault geometry, topography, and heterogeneous material properties in a (non)linear viscoelastic domain. Our method is benchmarked against Okada's analytical technique and the PyLith software package. The April 2015 Nepal earthquake is used as a case study to examine whether 3D structure can affect the predictions of seismic deformation models. We find that the inclusion of topography has a significant effect on our results.