To understand the mechanism of fault lubrication during the 1999 Taiwan Chi-Chi earthquake, we developed a new temperature proxy for carbonaceous materials by using infrared and Raman spectroscopies together with heating and friction experiments. We found marked anomalies in the infrared and Raman spectra of carbonaceous materials retrieved from the primary slip zone of the earthquake: the infrared spectra exhibited very weak aliphatic CH 2 and CH 3 peaks and aromatic C5C absorbance peaks, and the Raman spectra exhibited very weak disordered and graphitic bands and a high ratio of disordered band area to graphitic band area. Those weak peaks and bands and the band area ratio were reproduced by heating carbonaceous materials from the nearby host rock to 7008C. These results suggest that the frictional heat in the slip zone reached approximately 7008C. We characterized the host rock's carbonaceous materials by means of elemental analysis, pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and simultaneous thermogravimetry-differential scanning calorimetry and found that the H/C and O/C ratios were 1.29 and 0.30, respectively (which are close to the ratios for lignin) and that the volatile fraction was as high as 48 wt %. The pyrolysates obtained by heating from 100 to 4008C were dominated by phenols, fatty alcohols, and n-alkanes. When the residue from pyrolysis at 100-4008C was rapidly heated to 7008C, the resulting pyrolysate was dominated by phenols, aromatic compounds, heterocyclic compounds, and n-alkenes. This information suggests that change in the infrared and Raman spectra with increasing temperature may have been due to decomposition and aromatization reactions during pyrolysis. Rapid heating during earthquake slip may promote reactions of carbonaceous materials that are different from the reactions that occur during long-term geological metamorphism.

To estimate the slip parameters and understand the fault lubrication mechanism during the 1999 Taiwan Chi-Chi earthquake, we applied vitrinite reflectance geothermometry to samples retrieved from the Chelungpu fault. We found a marked reflectance anomaly of 1.30% ± 0.21% in the primary slip zone of the earthquake, whereas the reflectances in the surrounding deformed and host rocks were 0.45% to 0.77%. By applying a kinetic model of vitrinite thermal maturation together with a one-dimensional heat and thermal diffusion equation, we determined the shear stress and peak temperature in the slip zone during the earthquake to be 1.00 ± 0.04 MPa and 626°C ± 25°C, respectively. Taking into account the probable overestimation of the temperature owing to a mechanochemically enhanced reaction or flash heating at grain contacts, this temperature should be considered an upper limit. The lower limit was previously constrained to 400°C by studies of fluid-mobile trace-element concentrations and magnetic minerals. Therefore, we inferred that the peak temperature during the Chi-Chi earthquake was 400°C to 626°C, corresponding to an apparent friction coefficient of 0.01 to 0.06. Such low friction and the previous evidence of a high-temperature fluid suggest that thermal pressurization likely contributed to dynamic weakening during the Chi-Chi earthquake.

We carried out geochemical and mineralogical analyses on fault-zone rocks from the Anko section of the Median Tectonic Line in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, to investigate coseismic physicochemical processes in the fault zone. The latest fault zone in the Anko section contains cataclasite, fault breccia, and fault gouge of granitic composition, and brecciated basic schist. Protoliths of the granitic composition are from the Ryoke metamorphic belt and those of the basic schist from the Sambagawa metamorphic belt. X-ray diffraction analyses show a selective decrease of clay minerals coupled with an increase of amorphous phase in an intensely deformed layer of black gouge (5-to 10-cm thick). SEM observation reveals that the black gouge is characterized by a drastic reduction of grain size and abundant ultrafine particles of submicrometer to several tens of nanometers with well-rounded spheroidal shapes. These observations for the black gouge are indicative of strong mineral lattice distortion and granulation associated with earthquake slip. Geochemically, the black gouge is characterized by distinctly higher Li content and 87 Sr/ 86 Sr isotope ratio than surrounding cataclasites, breccias, and gouges, which have similar major element compositions. Model analysis reveals that the trace element composition of the black gouge is consistent with high-temperature (up to 250°C) coseismic fluid-rock interactions. Thermal and kinetic constraints indicate that there have been repeated slips on the fault at moderate depths (e.g., 600 m), although the tectonic process by which the fault zone has been uplifted and exposed in this area is not well understood.