UC San Diego

The 2021 M7.2 Haiti earthquake led to more than 2200 deaths and struck just a decade after the devastating 2010 M7.0 earthquake which was one of the deadliest earthquakes on record globally. Both events occurred within a complex network of faults comprising the Enriquillo Plantain Garden Fault Zone (EPGFZ), which spans the southern peninsula of Haiti. Although the main Enriquillo Plantain Garden Fault (EPGF) has historically been assumed to be a near-vertical strike-slip fault that runs the length of the peninsula, neither the 2010 nor 2021 events had a simple strike-slip mechanism, nor did either clearly rupture this relatively simple and well-mapped fault within its assumed geometry. This event emphasizes the importance of understanding segmented fault behavior and strain partitioning in transpressive regimes and raises new questions about how stress is distributed across the region.

In this dissertation, we present satellite remote sensing observations of ground deformation during and after the 2021 rupture and develop a dynamic rupture model which addresses the observations of this earthquake.