Erosion rates and orogenic-wedge kinematics in Taiwan inferred fromEmail alerting services cite this article to receive free e-mail alerts when new articles www.gsapubs.org/cgi/alerts click Subscribeto subscribe to Geology www.gsapubs.org/subscriptions/ click Permission requestto contact GSA http://www.geosociety.org/pubs/copyrt.htm#gsa click viewpoint. Opinions presented in this publication do not reflect official positions of the Society.positions by scientists worldwide, regardless of their race, citizenship, gender, religion, or political article's full citation. GSA provides this and other forums for the presentation of diverse opinions and articles on their own or their organization's Web site providing the posting includes a reference to the science. This file may not be posted to any Web site, but authors may post the abstracts only of their unlimited copies of items in GSA's journals for noncommercial use in classrooms to further education and to use a single figure, a single table, and/or a brief paragraph of text in subsequent works and to make GSA, employment. Individual scientists are hereby granted permission, without fees or further requests to

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Recent observations of an association between forearc basins and slip during subduction thrust earthquakes suggest a link between processes controlling upper plate structure and seismic coupling on the subduction-zone thrust fault. We present a mechanism for the formation of these basins where sedimentation occurs on landward-dipping segments of the subduction wedge, which itself is actively growing through the accretion of material from the subducting plate. Our numerical simulations demonstrate that sedimentation stabilizes the underlying wedge, preventing internal deformation beneath the basin. Maximum slip during great-thrust earthquakes tends to occur where sedimentary basins stabilize the overlaying wedge. The lack of deformation in these stable regions increases the likelihood of thermal pressurization of the subduction thrust, allows the fault to load faster, and allows greater healing of the fault between rupture events. These effects link deformation of the subduction wedge to the seismic coupling of the subduction thrust.