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Himalayan megathrust geometry and relation to topography revealed by the Gorkha earthquake

Nature Geoscience volume 9, pages 174–180 (2016)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 01 September 2016

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Abstract

The Himalayan mountain range has been the locus of some of the largest continental earthquakes, including the 2015 magnitude 7.8 Gorkha earthquake. Competing hypotheses suggest that Himalayan topography is sustained and plate convergence is accommodated either predominantly on the main plate boundary fault, or more broadly across multiple smaller thrust faults. Here we use geodetic measurements of surface displacement to show that the Gorkha earthquake ruptured the Main Himalayan Thrust fault. The earthquake generated about 1 m of uplift in the Kathmandu Basin, yet caused the high Himalaya farther north to subside by about 0.6 m. We use the geodetic data, combined with geologic, geomorphological and geophysical analyses, to constrain the geometry of the Main Himalayan Thrust in the Kathmandu area. Structural analyses together with interseismic and coseismic displacements are best explained by a steep, shallow thrust fault flattening at depth between 5 and 15 km and connecting to a mid-crustal, steeper thrust. We suggest that present-day convergence across the Himalaya is mostly accommodated by this fault—no significant motion on smaller thrust faults is required. Furthermore, given that the Gorkha earthquake caused the high Himalayan mountains to subside and that our fault geometry explains measured interseismic displacements, we propose that growth of Himalayan topography may largely occur during the ongoing post-seismic phase.

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Figure 1: Comparison of earthquake slip determined from surface geodetic displacements with long-term interseismic coupling.
Figure 2: Deformation patterns observed in Sentinel-1 interferograms for the 2015 Gorkha mainshock and comparison with long-term levelling data.
Figure 3: MHT geometry exploration along a cross-section (N18°).
Figure 4: Three-dimensional block diagram of the geometry proposed for the MHT.
Figure 5: Geologic cross-section incorporating the Main Himalayan Thrust geometry, and schematic cartoon of the 2015 rupture area relative to previous earthquakes.

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Change history

  • 18 August 2016

    In the version of this Article originally published, the interseismic coupling map was incorrectly plotted in Figure 1. This has been corrected in the online versions of the paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the UK Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) through the Looking Inside the Continents (LiCS) project (NE/K011006/1), the Earthquake without Frontiers (EwF) project (EwF_NE/J02001X/1_1), and the Centre for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET, GA/13/M/031, http://comet.nerc.ac.uk). The Sentinel-1A interferograms presented are a derived work of Copernicus data, subject to the ESA use and distribution conditions. R.J. is supported by the Marie Curie FP7 Initial Training Network iTECC (investigating Tectonic Erosion Climate Couplings). We are grateful to E. Lindsey and colleagues for making ALOS-2 displacements available at http://topex.ucsd.edu/nepal. We thank A. Copley, S. K. Ebmeier, P. England, A. Hooper, J. Jackson, B. Parsons, R. Walters and T. Wright for discussions. Most figures were made using the public domain Generic Mapping Tools36.

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Author notes

  1. R. Jolivet

    Present address: Present address: Ecole Normale Supérieure, Department of Geosciences, PSL Research University, 75231 Paris, France.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, COMET, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3AN, UK

    J. R. Elliott

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, COMET, Bullard Laboratories, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 OEZ, UK

    R. Jolivet & J.-P. Avouac

  3. COMET, School of Earth & Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

    P. J. González

  4. Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

    J.-P. Avouac & V. L. Stevens

  5. ARUP, 13 Fitzroy Street, London W1T 4BQ, UK

    J. Hollingsworth

  6. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3AN, UK

    M. P. Searle

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Contributions

The first two authors each contributed equally to the study. J.R.E. wrote the manuscript and processed Sentinel offset data. R.J. performed the fault modelling. P.J.G. processed the Sentinel interferograms. J.-P.A. conceived the research idea. J.H. processed the optical offset data. M.P.S. constructed the geologic cross-section. V.L.S. produced the interseismic coupling map. All authors took part in finalizing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to J. R. Elliott.

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Elliott, J., Jolivet, R., González, P. et al. Himalayan megathrust geometry and relation to topography revealed by the Gorkha earthquake. Nature Geosci 9, 174–180 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2623

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