Article,
Lessons learned from the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman megathrust rupture
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 38 (1): 103--131 (May 2010)
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-earth-040809-152537
Abstract
The 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake has been extensively studied because
of its great size and devastating consequences. Large amounts of
high quality seismic, geodetic, and geologic data have led to a number
of proposed models for its length, duration, fault geometry, rupture
velocity, and slip history. The latest of these models vary in their
details but now largely agree in their large-scale features, which
include significant coseismic slip along the entire 1300- to 1500-km
rupture, the bulk of which occurred fast enough to radiate seismic
waves. The earthquake's enormous size has challenged conventional
processing approaches and stimulated the development of new analysis
and inversion methods, including multiple-source inversions, highfrequency
body-wave imaging, and satellite observations of tsunami heights
and gravity changes. The Sumatra megathrust earthquake was the largest
in 40 years and is by far the best documented, but it does not seem
fundamentally different in its properties from other large subduction-zone
earthquakes.
