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Fan-delta uplift and mountain subsidence during the Haiti 2010 earthquake

Nature Geoscience volume 4, pages 255–259 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

The relative motion between the Caribbean and North American plates is accommodated by several active faults around Hispaniola Island1,2,3. The Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault in southern Haiti is one of these structures2,4. Strain equivalent to a magnitude 7.2 earthquake is estimated to have accumulated along this fault since its last significant activity4. The Haiti earthquake of 12 January 2010 was initially reported to have occurred along this fault5,6, but more recent studies proposed slips on previously unrecognized, neighbouring faults5,7,8. Here we use interferometric synthetic aperture radar data to show that surface deformation caused by the earthquake does not correspond to the present topography. Alluvial fan deltas were uplifted on the north side of the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault, whereas mountains located on the south side of the fault subsided, implying that faults other than the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault were responsible for the deformation. To determine fault structure, we fit the satellite surface deformation data to a fault model. We show that slip occurred on a fault dipping northward at 42°, with large thrust components. The maximum displacement on the fault was about 4 m at 10–20 km depth, offshore from the Tiburon peninsula. We confirm that the earthquake ruptured a blind thrust fault and show that the fault could not be identified from large-scale present-day topography.

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Figure 1: Tectonics around Hispaniola.
Figure 2: Interferograms of strip-map mode images.
Figure 3: Fault model.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Sandwell, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, and R. Mellors, San Diego State University, who kindly allowed us to use their program to process ScanSAR images. We also thank S. Toda, who made valuable suggestions. The PALSAR level 1.0 data were provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) via the Geographical Survey Institute as part of the project ‘Evaluation of Use of ALOS for Disaster Mitigation’ of the Earthquake Working Group. The PALSAR product is owned by JAXA and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan. We used Generic Mapping Tools27 to prepare illustrations.

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  1. Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan

    Manabu Hashimoto, Yo Fukushima & Yukitoshi Fukahata

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  1. Manabu Hashimoto
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  2. Yo Fukushima
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  3. Yukitoshi Fukahata
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Contributions

M.H. was the principal researcher of this study and was in charge of analysing the SAR images and creating the fault slip model. Y. Fukushima was responsible for preparing and developing the InSAR analysis procedures and for removing artefacts in the interferograms. Y. Fukahata developed the original inversion software for the InSAR data used in this study. All three authors discussed the interferometry results and the tectonic significance of the fault slip model.

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Correspondence to Manabu Hashimoto.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Hashimoto, M., Fukushima, Y. & Fukahata, Y. Fan-delta uplift and mountain subsidence during the Haiti 2010 earthquake. Nature Geosci 4, 255–259 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1115

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