Characteristics of secondary slip fronts associated with slow earthquakes in Cascadia

We implement an algorithm to automatically detect migrations of low frequency earthquakes at time scales between 30 min and 32 h during the 2003, 2004 and 2005 slow slip events in Cascadia. We interpret these migrations of seismicity as a passive manifestation of secondary slip fronts (SSFs) that propagate faster than the main front. We identify the dominant features of 383 SSFs, including time, location, duration, area, propagation velocity and estimate: their moment, stress drop, slip, and slip rate. We apply the same algorithm to continuous tremor detection in Cascadia between 2009 and 2015 and characterize 693 SSFs at time scales between 4 h and 32 h. We identify — to our knowledge for the first time — numerous 11–22.5 h long SSFs that propagate at velocities intermediate between slow slip events and previously reported SSFs. The systematic detection of SSFs fills a gap between seismically and geodetically detectable slow earthquake processes. Analysis of SSF basic features indicates a wide range of stress drops and slip rates (with medians of 5.8 kPa and 1.1 mm/h) as well as an intriguing relationship between SSF direction and duration that was observed in other contexts and could potentially help discriminate between the different physical models proposed to explain slow slip phenomena.