The Cascadia Subduction Zone and related subduction systems: Seismic structure, intraslab earthquakes and processes, and earthquake hazards

Abstract

The following report is the principal product of an international workshop titled “Intraslab Earthquakes in the Cascadia Subduction System: Science and Hazards” and was sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey, the Geological Survey of Canada and the University of Victoria. This meeting was held at the University of Victoria’s Dunsmuir Lodge, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada on September 18–21, 2000 and brought 46 participants from the U.S., Canada, Latin America and Japan. This gathering was organized to bring together active research investigators in the science of subduction and intraslab earthquake hazards. Special emphasis was given to “warm-slab” subduction systems, i.e., those systems involving young oceanic lithosphere subducting at moderate to slow rates, such as the Cascadia system in the U.S. and Canada, and the Nankai system in Japan. All the speakers and poster presenters provided abstracts of their presentations that were a made available in an abstract volume at the workshop. Most of the authors subsequently provided full articles or extended abstracts for this volume on the topics that they discussed at the workshop. Where updated versions were not provided, the original workshop abstracts have been included. By organizing this workshop and assembling this volume, our aim is to provide a global perspective on the science of warm-slab subduction, to thereby advance our understanding of internal slab processes and to use this understanding to improve appraisals of the hazards associated with large intraslab earthquakes in the Cascadia system. These events have been the most frequent and damaging earthquakes in western Washington State over the last century. As if to underscore this fact, just six months after this workshop was held, the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake occurred on February 28th, 2001 at a depth of about 55 km in the Juan de Fuca slab beneath the southern Puget Sound region of western Washington. The Governor’s Office of the State of Washington estimated damage at more than US$2 billion, making it among the costliest earthquakes in U.S. history.