The eastern Himalayan and Indo‐Burman plate boundary systems are distinct from the rest of the India‐Eurasia continental collision, due to oblique convergence across two orthogonal plate boundaries resulting in a zone of distributed deformation both within and away from the plate boundary. To understand the seismotectonics of this region, we model the source mechanism of 44 earthquakes using waveform inversion and combine them with source mechanism of 30 previously studied earthquakes. Depth distribution of these earthquakes reveal that the entire crust beneath northeast India is seismogenic. From spatial distribution and source mechanism it is evident that the N20°E convergence between India and Tibet is accommodated by N‐S convergence and E‐W subduction. The N‐S convergence is accommodated through (a) shallow thrust earthquakes within the eastern Himalayan wedge, (b) lower crustal thrust earthquakes along the northern edge of Shillong Plateau, (c) lower crustal dextral strike‐slip earthquakes in the Kopili fault zone, and (d) sinistral strike‐slip earthquakes within the Bengal Basin crust. The E‐W subduction results in shallow thrust earthquakes to intermediate depth strike‐slip earthquakes and deep focus thrust earthquakes underneath the Indo‐Burman convergence zone. Orientation of the fault plane and slip vectors point to downdip extension and along arc compression of the subducted Indian plate in response to slab pull forces and buckling at depth. Earthquake slip vectors are in good agreement with the GPS velocity vectors across northeast India and conforms to the clockwise rotating “microplates” model.

Far away landslide detection A mass wasting and flood event on 7 February 2021 in Uttarakhand, India, killed more than 200 people and damaged two hydropower plants. Cook et al . discovered that teleseimic signals from the beginning of this event were recorded at different stations on a regional seismic network in northern India. The signals were observed up to 100 kilometers from the disaster and demonstrate the potential for these far-away monitoring stations to be useful for early warning. This discovery suggests a different way to monitor such remote Himalayan valleys for mass wasting hazards. —BG

Deep focus earthquakes within the underthrust Indian lower crust beneath the Himalaya occur in very specific regions and have distinct source characteristics. The study of the source mechanisms of these earthquakes provides valuable constraints on the kinematics of deformation of the underthrust Indian Plate, and its influence on the active deformation of the overlying Himalayan wedge. One of the most significant regions of these deep focus earthquakes is beneath the Sikkim and Bhutan Himalaya. We study the source characteristics of the 2011 September 18 (M w 6.9) deep focus Sikkim main shock and its major aftershocks using global, regional and local waveform data. We determined the focal mechanism of the main shock using moment tensor inversion of global P and SH waveforms, and ascertained the earthquake fault plane using rupture directivity from regional P-wave spectra. The main shock originated at 53 ± 4 km depth and ruptured at least 20 km thickness of the underthrust Indian lower crust. Faulting occurred on a near vertical dextral strike-slip fault oriented NW-SE (strike 127 • , dip 81 • and rake 167 •), oblique to the local strike of the Himalayan arc. The rupture initiated from the SE end of the fault and propagated to the northwest. The main shock was followed by 20 small-to-moderate aftershocks (m b > 3.0), which we relocated using phase arrival times. We computed the focal mechanisms of the larger ones (m b ≥ 3.5) using local waveform inversion. We find that all aftershocks originated SE of the main shock, between depths of 12 and 50 km, and have dominantly strike-slip mechanisms. Our results, combined with the source mechanisms of earthquakes from previous studies, reveals that the entire underthrust Indian crust is seismogenic and deforms by dextral strikeslip motion on oblique structures beneath the Sikkim and Bhutan Himalaya. These active oblique structures with transverse motion possibly mark the western boundary of the clockwise rotating 'microplates' in northeast India observed from GPS geodesy.