TY - JOUR A1 - Mohr, Christian Heinrich A1 - Manga, Michael A1 - Wald, David T1 - Stronger peak ground motion, beyond the threshold to initiate a response, does not lead to larger stream discharge responses to earthquakes JF - Geophysical research letters N2 - The impressive number of stream gauges in Chile, combined with a suite of past and recent large earthquakes, makes Chile a unique natural laboratory to study several streams that recorded responses to multiple seismic events. We document changes in discharge in eight streams in Chile following two or more large earthquakes. In all cases, discharge increases. Changes in discharge occur for peak ground velocities greater than about 7-11cm/s. Above that threshold, the magnitude of both the increase in discharge and the total excess water do not increase with increasing peak ground velocities. While these observations are consistent with previous work in California, they conflict with lab experiments that show that the magnitude of permeability changes increases with increasing amplitude of ground motion. Instead, our study suggests that streamflow responses are binary. Plain Language Summary Earthquakes deform and shake the surface and the ground below. These changes may affect groundwater flows by increasing the permeability along newly formed cracks and/or clearing clogged pores. As a result, groundwater flow may substantially increase after earthquakes and remain elevated for several months. Here we document streamflow anomalies following multiple high magnitude earthquakes in multiple streams in one of the most earthquake prone regions worldwide, Chile. We take advantage of the dense monitoring network in Chile that recorded streamflow since the 1940s. We show that once a critical ground motion is exceeded, streamflow responses to earthquakes can be expected. KW - earthquake KW - streamflow KW - shaking KW - Chile KW - modeling Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078621 SN - 0094-8276 SN - 1944-8007 VL - 45 IS - 13 SP - 6523 EP - 6531 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mohr, Christian Heinrich A1 - Manga, Michael A1 - Wang, Chi-Yuen A1 - Korup, Oliver T1 - Regional changes in streamflow after a megathrust earthquake JF - Earth & planetary science letters N2 - Moderate to large earthquakes can increase the amount of water feeding stream flows, mobilizing excess water from deep groundwater, shallow groundwater, or the vadose zone. Here we examine the regional pattern of streamflow response to the Maule M8.8 earthquake across Chile's diverse topographic and hydro-climatic gradients. We combine streamflow analyses with groundwater flow modeling and a random forest classifier, and find that, after the earthquake, at least 85 streams had a change in flow. Discharge mostly increased () shortly after the earthquake, liberating an excess water volume of >1.1 km3, which is the largest ever reported following an earthquake. Several catchments had increased discharge of >50 mm, locally exceeding seasonal streamflow discharge under undisturbed conditions. Our modeling results favor enhanced vertical permeability induced by dynamic strain as the most probable process explaining the observed changes at the regional scale. Supporting this interpretation, our random forest classification identifies peak ground velocity and elevation extremes as most important for predicting streamflow response. Given the mean recurrence interval of ∼25 yr for >M8.0 earthquakes along the Peru–Chile Trench, our observations highlight the role of earthquakes in the regional water cycle, especially in arid environments. KW - Maule earthquake KW - streamflow response KW - permeability KW - groundwater flow modeling KW - earthquake hydrology Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2016.11.013 SN - 0012-821X SN - 1385-013X VL - 458 SP - 418 EP - 428 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Mohr, Christian Heinrich A1 - Manga, Michael M. T1 - Bayesian detection of streamflow response to earthquakes JF - Water resources research : an AGU journal N2 - Detecting whether and how river discharge responds to strong earthquake shaking can be time-consuming and prone to operator bias when checking hydrographs from hundreds of gauging stations. We use Bayesian piecewise regression models to show that up to a fifth of all gauging stations across Chile had their largest change in daily streamflow trend on the day of the M-w 8.8 Maule earthquake in 2010. These stations cluster distinctly in the near field though the number of detected streamflow changes varies with model complexity and length of time window considered. Credible seismic streamflow changes at several stations were the highest detectable in eight months, with an increased variance of discharge surpassing the variance of discharge following rainstorms. We conclude that Bayesian piecewise regression sheds new and unbiased insights on the duration, trend, and variance of streamflow response to strong earthquakes, and on how this response compares to that following rainstorms. KW - Bayesian analysis KW - Chile KW - discharge KW - earthquake KW - streamflow changes Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR028874 SN - 0043-1397 SN - 1944-7973 VL - 57 IS - 7 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken, NJ ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mohr, Christian Heinrich A1 - Manga, Michael A1 - Wang, Chi-yuen A1 - Kirchner, James W. A1 - Bronstert, Axel T1 - Shaking water out of soil JF - Geology N2 - Moderate to large earthquakes can increase the amount of water flowing in streams. Previous interpretations and models assume that the extra water originates in the saturated zone. Here we show that earthquakes may also release water from the unsaturated zone when the seismic energy is sufficient to overcome the threshold of soil water retention. Soil water may then be released into aquifers, increasing streamflow. After the M8.8 Maule, Chile, earthquake, the discharge in some headwater catchments of the Chilean coastal range increased, and the amount of extra water in the discharge was similar to the total amount of water available for release from the unsaturated zone. Assuming rapid recharge of this water to the water table, a groundwater flow model that accounts for evapotranspiration and water released from soils can reproduce the increase in discharge as well as the enhanced diurnal discharge variations observed after the earthquake. Thus the unsaturated zone may play a previously unappreciated, and potentially significant, role in shallow hydrological responses to earthquakes. Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1130/G36261.1 SN - 0091-7613 SN - 1943-2682 VL - 43 IS - 3 SP - 207 EP - 210 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Boulder ER -