Slow earthquakes along oceanic fracture zones: evidence for asthenospheric flow away from hotspots?

The regime of strain release along transform faults of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge system is studied. It is shown that earthquakes along certain fracture zones exhibit systematic discrepancies between values of their magnitudes measured at short and long periods, implying a regime of slower strain release, also observed in a pattern of complex body waveshapes. These “slow” fracture zones do not correlate with simple geographic or kinematic properties, but usually occur in the neighborhood of hotspot volcanism, frequently also characterized by gravity and bathymetry anomalies. We propose that regimes of slow strain release may be due to a partial lubrication of the fault along these fracture zones, which may itself be due to asthenospheric flow from the nearby hotspots, along the pattern of pipelines described by Vogt and Johnson and by Morgan.