Data Publication

Data supplement of "Tectonic context and possible triggering of the 2019-2020 Puerto Rico earthquake sequence"

Govers, Rob M.A.

YoDa Data Repository, Utrecht University, Netherlands

(2021)

Paper Abstract: An historically unprecedented seismic moment was released by crustal events of the 2019-2020 earthquake sequence near southwest Puerto Rico. The sequence involved at least two, and per-haps three interacting fault systems. The largest Mw 6.4 event was likely triggered by left lateral strike-slip events along the eastern extension of the North Boquerón Bay-Punta Montalva fault zone. The mainshock occurred in a normal faultspan> zone that extends into a region where previous studies documented extensional deformation, beyond the Ponce fault and the Bajo Tasmanian fault. Coulomb stress changes by the mainshock may have triggered further normal faulting af-tershocks, left lateral strike-slip events in the region where these two fault zones interacted, and possibly right lateral strike-slip aftershocks along a third structure extending southward, the Guayanilla fault zone. Extension directions of the seismic sequence are consistently NNW-SSE oriented, in agreement with the GNSS-inferred motion direction of eastern Hispaniola relative to western Puerto Rico, and with crustal stress estimates for the overriding plate boundary zone. Data in this repository was used for the figures and as input data for Coulomb stress modeling. The software for making the figures was Generic Mapping Tools (Wessel et al., 2019). The software for computing coseismic stress changes is available online (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3894137). The data is provided in the main folder and 2 subfolders. Detailed information about these files as well as information on how the data is processed is given in the explanatory file readme.txt. Contact person is Dr Rob Govers - r.govers@uu.nl.

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