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The 2020 Mw 5.5 Mizoram earthquake and associated swarm activity in the junction of the Surma Basin and Indo-Myanmar Subduction Region

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Abstract

A severely felt earthquake of Mw 5.5 occurred on 22 June 2020, in the Champhai district of Mizoram, North East Region (NER) of India, in the vicinity of the Indo-Myanmar subduction zone. This earthquake was associated with a swarm type of activity; six earthquakes of Mw 4.0–5.1 and some 16 earthquakes of Mw 3.0–3.9 occurred almost within two months like a swarm which caused much panic in the Mizoram state and neighbouring region. The mainshock of Mw 5.5 was preceded by an earthquake of Mw 5.1 on the previous day, 21 June 2020, in the capital city Aizawl, ~ 70 km northwest of Champhai. All of these events originated at shallow depth (~ 10–30 km) and occurred in the intra-plate zone of the subducting Indian plate. Fault plane solution of the mainshock indicates strike-slip faulting that matches fairly well with the transverse Mat Fault in the Outer Indo-Burma Wedge (OIBW). Macroseismic investigation of the mainshock at some 46 sites shows the maximum intensity of VIII (MMI scale) at the epicentral track. An attenuation relation between intensity and hypocentral distance is derived, which may be helpful to assess seismic hazards in this region.

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Data availability

All the data are available with this manuscript. Seismic event catalogue was collected from www.seismo.gov.in. Field data are collected by the authors of the manuscript.

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Acknowledgements

The first and corresponding authors (BB & SS) are grateful to the technical staff of the National Center for Seismology, MoES for maintaining the event information on the website www.seismo.gov.in. The authors are also thankful to Prof. J. R. Kayal for his suggestions which have helped in improving the quality of the manuscript. The second author (RR) and the third author (LDP) acknowledge UGC NET-SRF scholarship and DST-SERB (File No. EEQ/2017/000539), respectively, for providing financial assistance to carry out the fieldwork. The corresponding author (SS) acknowledges Mohit Rawat, SA, NCS for putting the much-sought help in accurately determining the epicentre of the Mw 5.5, June 22, 2020 earthquake just after the earthquake commenced. The third author (LDP) acknowledges H. Lalnumawal, Principal, Khawbang Higher Secondary school for some field photographs. Figures are prepared by using Global Mapper (V13) and GMT (V6) software (Wessel et al. 2019). We thank the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal, Professor James Goff and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the submitted manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, Pachhunga University College, Aizawl, Mizoram, India

    Bubul Bharali

  2. Department of Applied Geology, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, Assam, India

    Raghupratim Rakshit

  3. Centre for Disaster Management, Mizoram University, Aizawl, Mizoram, India

    Lal Dinpuia

  4. National Center for Seismology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, New Delhi, India

    Sowrav Saikia

  5. Geo Sciences & Technology Division, CSIR-North East Institute of Science & Technology, Jorhat, Assam, India

    Santanu Baruah

Authors
  1. Bubul Bharali
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  2. Raghupratim Rakshit
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  3. Lal Dinpuia
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  4. Sowrav Saikia
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  5. Santanu Baruah
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Contributions

SS and BB designed the research. LDP and BB visited the earthquake affected sites and prepared the report, SS has performed the seismotectonic analysis, BB and RR have drafted the geological background of the study area and prepared some figures, SB contributed to the much-sought input about the inference of the study. Overall SS did the science planning, execution and build final manuscript based on inputs from other members.

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Correspondence to Sowrav Saikia.

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Bharali, B., Rakshit, R., Dinpuia, L. et al. The 2020 Mw 5.5 Mizoram earthquake and associated swarm activity in the junction of the Surma Basin and Indo-Myanmar Subduction Region. Nat Hazards 109, 2381–2398 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-021-04924-1

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