Three-dimensional stress state above and below the plate boundary fault after the 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku earthquake

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program conducted Expedition 343 and 343T, named the Japan Trench Fast Drilling Project (JFAST), to drill through the plate boundary fault that ruptured during the 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku earthquake in the area with the largest fault slip displacement near the Japan trench. Analyses of breakouts observed from borehole C0019B produced postearthquake stress states above the plate boundary fault between the subducting Pacific plate and overriding North American plate. To supplement the lack of stress data below the rupture zone of the earthquake, we conducted core-based three-dimensional stress measurements by the anelastic strain recovery (ASR) method using four whole-round core samples of sediments, of which three samples were located above, but one sample was located below the plate boundary fault in borehole C0019E. As a result of the stress measurements, the postearthquake three-dimensional stress magnitudes at ∼802 and ∼828 meters below seafloor (mbsf) across the plate boundary fault at ∼820 mbsf reveal a normal faulting stress regime. The differences between the three-dimensional intermediate principal stress and the minimum principal stress at the two depths are less than 1 MPa, suggesting a complete release of horizontal tectonic stresses that accumulated before the earthquake. In addition, the maximum horizontal stress SHmax azimuth N115°E at ∼828 mbsf below the plate boundary fault from ASR measurements shows consistency with the SHmax azimuth N139 ± 23°E (mean ± standard deviation) at ∼550–810 mbsf from breakout analyses above the fault. Taken together with the similar stress magnitudes at ∼802 and ∼828 mbsf, we interpret that the postearthquake stress states are almost the same in the sediments above and below the plate boundary fault. In other words, the stress state in terms of both orientation and magnitude is continuous across the fault. At a shallower depth of ∼177 mbsf in the slope sediments, the ASR stress data reveal a “stress state at rest”, which is likely free from tectonic effects of plate subduction, suggesting that the stress state was reset by the great coseismic displacement of ∼50 m slipped during the Tohoku earthquake.