Temperature plays a critical role in defining the seismogenic zone, the area of the crust where earthquakes most commonly occur; however, thermal controls on fault ruptures are rarely observed directly. We used a rapidly deployed seismic array to monitor an unusual earthquake cascade in 2018 at Lombok, Indonesia, during which two magnitude 6.9 earthquakes with surprisingly different rupture characteristics nucleated beneath an active arc volcano. The thermal imprint of the volcano on the fault elevated the base of the seismogenic zone beneath the volcanic edifice by 8 km, while also reducing its width. This thermal "squeezing" directly controlled the location, directivity, dynamics, and magnitude of the earthquake cascade. Earthquake segmentation due to thermal structure can occur where strong temperature gradients exist on a fault.
Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).