MOTHES , P.

On April 16 2016, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake occurred along the Nazca-South America plate interface near the city of Pedernales in Ecuador. GPS measurements in the years prior to the earthquake had indeed shown a partial and spatially heterogeneous pattern of interseismic coupling in central-northern Ecuador (Nocquet et al., 2014, Chlieh et...

The North Andean Sliver (hereinafter NAS) lies at the northwestern end of the South American plate (hereinafter SOAM). This extensive area exhibits a complex deformation process controlled by the interactions of Nazca, Caribbean, South America plates, and Panama block, producing crustal seismicity, arc-continental collision, and subduction...

We use new GPS data to determine an updated Euler pole describing the present-day motion of the oceanic Nazca Plate. Our solution includes continuous GPS (cGPS) measurements at Malpelo Island offshore Colombia, two sites in the Galapagos archipelago, Easter Island and Salas y Gomez Island in the western part of the plate and Robinson Crusoe...

Along the Ecuadorian margin, oblique subduction induces deformation of the overriding continental plate. For the last 15 Ma, both exhumation and tectonic history of Ecuador suggest that the northeastward motion of the North Andean Sliver (NAS) was accompanied by an eastward migration of its eastern boundary and successive progressively...

For the first time in decades, a sudden increase in seismicity has been observed and monitored at Cayambe volcano in Ecuador, in 2016. This seismic unrest, which occurred a few months after the April 2016, Mw 7.8 Pedernales subduction earthquake, has raised many questions, especially as there is no record of recent eruptions at Cayambe volcano....

In the Northern Andes, partitioning of oblique subduction of the Nazca plate beneath the South American continent induces a northeastward motion of the North Andean Sliver. The strain resulting from this motion is absorbed by crustal faults, which have produced magnitude 7 + earthquakes historically in the Andean Cordillera of Ecuador and...

Magma movement or reservoir pressurisation can drive swarms of low-magnitude volcano-tectonic earthquakes, as well as occasional larger earthquakes (>M5) on local tectonic faults. Earthquakes >M5 near volcanoes are challenging to interpret in terms of evolving volcanic hazard, but are often associated with eruptions, and in some cases enhance...

We document a 1 week long slow slip event (SSE) with an equivalent moment magnitude of 6.0-6.3 which occurred in August 2010 below La Plata Island (Ecuador), south of the rupture area of the 1906 Mw = 8.8 megathrust earthquake. GPS data reveal that the SSE occurred at a depth of about 10 km, within the downdip part of a shallow (<15 km),...

A dense GPS network deployed in Ecuador reveals a highly heterogeneous pattern of interseismic coupling confined in the first 35 km depth of the contact between the subducting oceanic Nazca plate and the North Andean Sliver. Interseismic models indicate that the coupling is weak and very shallow (0-15 km) in south Ecuador and increases...

Large earthquakes are usually assumed to release all of the strain accumulated since the previous event, implying a reduced seismic hazard after them. However, long records of seismic history at several subduction zones suggest supercycle behaviour, where centuries-long accumulated strain is released through clustered large earthquakes,...

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