Figure 10.

2001 Peru earthquake and triggered seismicity at Coropuna,

Tutupaca and Titicaca. InSAR associated with the swarm is discussed in the
text.
3.2.5 Central Chile at 8S
We find one swarm in late 1999 near the Armco Peninsula (Fig. I I).
This swarm is immediately south of and adjacent to the aftershock zone of an
MW= 6.6 earthquake that struck the region in 2004 and is shown as a star in
Fig. IL The earthquake was not the subject of any previous studies, probably
because it was not a damaging earthquake and is relatively small compared to
other earthquakes in South America. The recent MW= 8.8 2010 February
Chilean earthquake occurred to the north of this swarm, and we will discuss
possible interaction between these events in Section 4.1.
4 DISCUSSION
A key motivation for this work is to assess whether there is a link between
aseismic fault slip, fluid or magmatic movements and seismic swarms. Direct
geodetic evidence (Lohman & McGuire 2007; Ozawa et aL 2007; Wolfe et al.
2007) suggests that aseismic slip sometimes coincides with earthquake
swarms, but where no geodetic data exists this suggestion has been based on
an expansion or propagation of hypocentres at rates faster than fluid diffusion is
likely to occur (e.g. Vidale & Shearer 2006), Alternatively, fluid or volatile
movement appears to dominate some swarm regions. The Vogtland/NW
Bohemia swarm region is extensively studied (e.g. Fischer & Horalek 2003) and
interpreted to represent devolatilization of an active magma body (Brauer et al.
2003). This devolatilization is thought to be the forcing mechanism behind
events with significant non-double-couple moment tensors (Haralek et al. 2002).
Although we did not find unambiguous evidence for aseismic deformation
associated with swarms in South America, we discuss several properties of
these swarms that are consistent with aseismic
Figure 11. 1999 Arauco Peninsula earthquake swarm.

deformation observed with swarms elsewhere. Thus, we suspect that aseismic

deformation may have been present during at least some of the swarms, but
was not observed either due to lack of available data or because the
deformation was below our detection threshold.

4.1 Ridge subduction and megathrust segmentation

We find swarms on or near the megathrust in some interesting and unique
regions of the South American margin. There are three main ridges currently
subducting beneath South America: the Carnegie Ridge in Ecuador, the Nazca
Ridge in Peru and the Juan Fernandez Ridge in Chile. All three of these ridges
have been associated with earthquake swarms in the past 40 yr (most easily
seen in Fig. 1). The Carnegie and Nazca ridges have been characterized by
prominent seismic gaps (e.g. Swenson & Beck 1996, 1999), and the 2007 Pisco
earthquake was shown to only partially fill the Nazca gap (e.g, Pritchard &
Fielding 2008; Perfettini et at 2010). There are two endmember models
proposed for why seismic gaps occur. Either (1) the fault is fully locked and
accumulating stress to be released in a great earthquake or (2) the fault is
unable to accumulate stress and will never rupture in a great earthquake. If the
swarms in Ecuador are associated with significant aseismic moment release as
observed in other areas (e.g. Lohman & McGuire 2007; Ogata 2007) this could
possibly explain part of the seismic gap in the southern Ecuador region, as
frequent aseismic stress release could prevent the fault from loading.
Two recent earthquakes in South America show potential interaction with
earthquake swarm regions, the 2007 Pisco earthquake and the 2010 Chile
earthquake. In Peru, Pritchard &. Fielding (2008) demonstrate that a seismic
gap still remains after the 2.007 Peru earthquake, particularly at the crest of the
incoming Nazca Ridge to the south of the 2007 rupture zone. This region above
the incoming Nazca Ridge has experienced geodetically constrained afterslip
on the order of 0.5 m after the Pisco earthquake (Perfettini ei al. 2010, Fig, 9).
This is also the area of the 2005-2006 earthquake swarm. Pritchard & Fielding
(2008) solve for approximately 10 m of maximum slip during the earthquake.
Since the last earthquake in the region occurred in 1746, this earthquake

released approximately half of the ~20 m slip deficit accumulated (assuming full
coupling) since then. This deficit may be made up in future earthquakes or the
deficit may be (or have been) accommodated aseismically. These observations
could document a transition in fault properties associated with the subduction of
the Nazca Ridge from velocity weakening to velocity strengthening (e.g.
Perfettini a al. 2010).
The MW= 8.8 Chile earthquake on 2010 February 27, ruptured 4 of the
megathrust between ~34 and ~38S. This earthquake was bounded to the
north and south by the Arauco swarm (Fig. 11) and the Topocalma swarms
(Supporting Information Section 83,1.2 and Fig. 57). Fig. 12 shows the
relationship between slip distribution, aftershocks and prior earthquake swarms,
The epicentre was at ~36S, so the rupture propagated bilaterally. The rupture
was terminated at both ends in regions that had experienced prior swarm
activity, again suggesting a potential relationship between earthquake swarm
processes and megathrust rupturing processes. The Topocalma swarms are
associated with the subduction of the Juan Fernandez Ridge, which is a border
sediment input to the trench and styles of volcanism vonHuene et al. (1997),
suggesting that to the north, the 2010 rupture was controlled by downgoing
plate properties. The southern terminus of the 2010 rupture was the Arauco
Peninsula, which Melnick et(2009) suggest has been a consistent barrier to
rupture propagation on the million year timescale. Downgoing plate bathymetry
is smooth across the Arauco Peninsula, but the Arauco Peninsula is interpreted
to be the northern boundary of a forearc microplate bounded by the Lanalhue
fault, which strikes through the peninsula, Melnick et at. (2009) suggest that
seismicity in the region, including the 1999 earthquake swarm, is all in the upper
crust and not on the megathrust. Thus, Melnick et al. (2009) suggest that at the
Arauco Peninsula the overriding plate is the dominant segmenting force.
The swarms before the earthquakes in Chile and Peru could be related to the
coseismic rupture in two ways. First, the swarms could indicate areas where
aseismic slip has occurred such that rupture is not likely to propagate through
the swarm area. Alternatively,

swarms could signify an area of the plate

interface that has mechanical properties conducive to swarm generation and

provides a bather to rupture propagation (i.e. an area of stable sliding, or

heterogeneous frictional properties or fluid distribution).
4.2 Earthquake swarm scaling rotations
We explored the magnitudefrequency content in our catalogue of swarms to
test whether there is any indication of how frequent swarms in South America
may be and if South American swarms are similar in their rate of occurrence to
swarms in Japan or southern California. Vidale et at (2006) and Vidale &
Shearer (2006) use local catalogues to constrain types of earthquake bursts in
Japan and southern California, but the sizes of the events and duration of the
catalogues are different than for our swarm search. To compare South American
swarms with the local catalogue of Japanese swarms, we examine the
frequency of swarms per unit of margin length and time. We did not include
southern California in this analysis because the different tectonic environments
do not allow the frequency to be normalized by margin, length. Also, we do not
normalize by convergence rate. Although faster convergence should require
more stress to be released, it is not clear that this should necessarily reflect
earthquake swarm generation. Convergence velocities for South America (7080 mm yr- 1) and Japan (75-83 mm yr-1) are similar within error (Syracuse &
Abers 2006), so we would not expect this normalization to change the results.
Fig. 13 shows that when normalized this way and grouped into 0.4 MW, bins,
both swarm catalogues are similar with respect to how frequent swarms of a
given magnitude should be. Extrapolation suggests that in South America, an
MW= 4 swarm should occur about every year and we estimate there should be
seven MW= 2.5 (near the observable completeness limit when dense local
seismic networks exist) swarms per year. Some swarms of this magnitude have
been reported in South America, for example at Cordon Caulle (Smithsonian
Institution 1994), at Nevado del Ruiz, (Banks et al. 1990) and in northern Chile
(e.g. Salazar 2008). An MW= 8 swarm should occur every 50 yr and an MW=
8.5 swarm every 90 yr, but it is important to keep in mind that events this large
may not be physically possible.
When possible, we calculated apparent along-strike (parallel to the trench)
epicentral propagation velocities of the swarms with a least-squares linear fit.

Table 4 shows a brief comparison of epicentral propagation rates found in this

study and in other reas of the world. All studies show along-strike propagation
of epicentres on the order of 5-10 km d-1. As this propagation velocity seems to
be common for aseismic transient events (e.g. Lohman & McGuire 2007; Shelly
et al. 2007; Wech & Creager 2008; Boyarko & Brucizinski 2010), it might
indicate that some of the swarms we observe are partially driven by slow slip.
We also used our catalogue to explore relationships between different
properties of swarms in this catalogue. No obvious patterns emerged relating
moment release, number of earthquakes, duration and swarm area.
4.3 Aseismic slip and stress drops
Both swarms that we studied with InSAR (Ticsani and Copiapd) show no
conclusive large aseismic slip component. However, both swarms studied here
contained inset bursts of seismicity that accounted for a large amount of the
total seismic moment released in the swarm, but over a short period of time
compared to the swarm duration. Various authors (Toda et al. 2002; Ogata
2007; Llenas et al. 2009) have argued that such bursts of seismicity should be
removed from the swarm analysis because they may indicate a separate
process, such as a triggered main shock-aftershock sequence that is not
directly related to the aseismic slip. The largest earthquakes in