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○
Coseismic Slip in the 2016 M w 7.8 Ecuador
Earthquake Imaged from Sentinel-1A Radar
Interferometry
by Ping He, Eric A. Hetland, Qi Wang, Kaihua Ding, Yangmao Wen, and
Rong Zou
ABSTRACT
The M w 7.8 Ecuador earthquake on 16 April 2016 is the sixth
earthquake larger than M w 7 to rupture the subduction mega-
thrust between the Nazca and South American plates since the
M w 8.8 Colombia–Ecuador earthquake in 1906. We use In-
terferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) images from
Sentinel-1A to determine coseismic surface displacements
associated with this earthquake. The interferograms exhibit
a relatively simple pattern of deformation, with maximum dis-
placements of 0.7 and 0.3 m on the descending and ascending
images, respectively. We invert the interferograms for both rup-
ture geometry and slip distribution in the earthquake. We find
that the data are best described by slip on a fault dipping 17° to
the east and that these InSAR data cannot uniquely constrain
the strike. The maximum inferred slip is just over 2.5 m at
about 20 km depth, with the main slip in the depth range of
about 10–25 km. The geodetic moment of our preferred slip
model is 7:15 × 1020 N·m, equivalent to M w 7.87. Our results
suggest that there is little, if any, partitioning of the oblique
plate convergence. The 2016 Ecuador earthquake is coincident
with the location of the 1942 M w 7.8 earthquake, with both
earthquakes most likely rupturing an asperity that also failed in
the 1906 M w 8.8 earthquake.
Electronic Supplement: Recorded and synthetic interferograms,
figures of trade-off between fault parameters, checkerboard
test, and coseismic slip model.
INTRODUCTION
The relatively fast convergence between the oceanic Nazca
plate and South America in the region offshore of Ecuador
and Colombia (e.g., García Cano et al., 2014) causes significant
elastic strain to build up along the nonuniformly coupled plate
interface, resulting in several large megathrust earthquakes
(M w > 7) over the past century (Chlieh et al., 2014). One of
the earliest megathrust earthquakes in this region was the great
doi: 10.1785/0220160151 Seismological Research Letters
E
1906 (M w 8.8) Colombia–Ecuador earthquake, which is the
largest event documented offshore Ecuador and to date is the
seventh largest earthquake worldwide. Following the 1906
earthquake, there have been several other significant mega-
thrust earthquakes offshore Ecuador, including the 1942
(M w 7.8), 1958 (M w 7.7), 1979 (M w 8.2), and 1998 (M w 7.1),
along with the recent earthquake in 2016 (M w 7.8; Fig. 1). All
of these earthquakes in the last century ruptured the mega-
thrust within a 500-km-long seismic belt between latitude
3° N and 2° S (e.g., Swenson and Beck, 1996; Chlieh et al.,
2014). Although each of the more recent earthquakes was
possibly due to failure of isolated asperities, the 1906 earth-
quake most likely involved rupture of multiple asperities (e.g.,
Swenson and Beck, 1996; Chlieh et al., 2014). In this article,
we focus on the recent megathrust earthquake offshore of
Ecuador, with a goal of placing this earthquake in the context
of the past earthquakes offshore Ecuador and the 1906
Colombia–Ecuador earthquake.
On 16 April 2016 at 23:58:37 UTC, an M w 7.8 thrust
earthquake occurred offshore of Ecuador. A maximum modi-
fied Mercalli intensity (MMI) of VIII was reported in the cities
of Esmeraldas and Pedernales, ∼130 and 170 km, respectively,
from the capital Quito, Ecuador (U.S. Geological Survey
[USGS]; see Data and Resources), causing over 450 fatalities
(emergency events database [EM-DAT]; see Data and Resour-
ces). During the first two months, the mainshock was followed
by a total of 138 aftershocks with M w ≥ 3 (the largest M w 6.7)
within a nearly north–south-trending zone of 150 km by
200 km (International Seismological Centre; see Data and Re-
sources; Fig. 1). The focal solutions of the USGS and Global
Centroid Moment Tensor Project (Global CMT; Ekström
et al., 2012) indicated that the earthquake involved primarily
thrust faulting with minor strike-slip components on the in-
terface of the plate boundary. The USGS finite-fault model
demonstrated a compact slip distribution overlapping, and ex-
tending slightly to the north, of the region that slipped during
the 1942 M w 7.8 earthquake.
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▴ Figure 1. Tectonic setting of the 2016 M w 7.8 Ecuador earthquake. Blue rectangles depict the footprints of the Sentinel-1A images used
in this study, and black lines depict active faults (Alvarado et al., 2014). Focal mechanism plots depict the focal mechanism solutions from
the Global Centroid Moment Tensor (Global CMT; Ekström et al., 2012) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Yellow circles are two months
of aftershocks taken from the International Seismological Centre (ISC) catalog. Stars denote the epicenters of 1906–1998 M w > 7:0 earth-
quakes (Chlieh et al., 2014). Gray-shaded ellipses are the inferred high-slip region of the 1942, 1958, 1979, and 1998 earthquakes (Beck and
Ruff, 1984; Swenson and Beck, 1996; Segovia, 2001). Black dashed ellipse depicts the region of the megathrust inferred to have slipped in
the great 1906 earthquake, and dashed contours show the aftershocks zones of the 1942, 1958, and 1979 events (Mendoza and Dewey,
1984). The inset map shows the larger tectonic setting.

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Table 1
Interferometry Pairs Used in This Study (A or D Denotes Ascending or Descending, Respectively)
Master Slave Inclined Azimuth
Track (A/D) (yyyy/mm/dd) (yyyy/mm/dd) Perp. B (m) Angle (°) Angle (°) σ (mm) α (km)
018 (A) 2016/03/29 2016/04/22 10 30–44 −168 8.2 15.8
040 (D) 2016/04/12 2016/04/24 18 30–44 −12 3.7 8.9
“Perp. B” is the perpendicular baseline of the pair; σ is the standard deviation calculated with all points in the nondeforming
area; and α is the e-folding correlation length scale of 1D covariance function (SAR data; see Data and Resources).

As demonstrated by numerous studies on large earth-
quakes, spatially dense, near-field geodetic measurements of
coseismic surface deformation yields more insights into both
coseismic slip distribution and fault geometry than teleseismic
data (e.g., Lindsey et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2015), although
onshore geodetic data do have resolution issues when infer-
ring offshore slip in megathrust earthquakes (e.g., Simons
et al., 2011; Evans and Meade, 2012; Zhang et al., 2016).
Although there is a continuously operating Global Position-
ing System (cGPS) network of 70 permanent stations in
Ecuador (Mothes et al., 2013), the cGPS network is perhaps
too sparse to characterize the full pattern of surface displace-
ments associated with this earthquake. As a new generation
satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system, the
European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1A has proven to be suc-
cessful in determining ground deformation due to recent ma-
jor earthquakes (e.g., Lindsey et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2015;
Solaro et al., 2016). In this study, we process SAR images ac-
quired by the new generation, C-band, Sentinel-1A SAR system
and use these data to constrain both rupture geometry and slip
distribution of the 2016 earthquake. We also explore the reso-
lution of the Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR)
data and discuss the earthquake within the context of the pre-
vious megathrust earthquakes offshore of Ecuador.
INSAR DATA
Onshore coseismic deformation in the 2016 Ecuador earth-
quake is imaged quite well by the Sentinel-1A satellite on both
ascending and descending orbits (Table 1). The Sentinel-1A
radar operates in four modes with different resolution and cov-
erage: strip-map mode (SM), interferometric wide swath mode
(IW), extrawide swath mode (EW), and wave mode (WM).
Both IW and EW mode employ the novel terrain observation
with progressive scans (TOPS) acquisition for interferometry
(Grandin et al., 2016), which achieves an extended swath by
steering the beam in range, from backward to forward in the
azimuth direction for each burst (De Zan and Guarnieri,
2006). However, the TOPS success was realized at the cost
of a much higher accuracy of pixel co-registration at the level
of <0.001 pixel than is required to eliminate the azimuth phase
deramping (De Zan and Guarnieri, 2006). Currently, a tech-
nique termed as enhanced spectral diversity performs well for a
single-frame data case (Xu et al., 2016). Sentinel-1A SAR data
have been used for the investigation of recent earthquakes, such
as the 2015 M w 7.9 Gorkha, 2015 M w 8.3 Illapel, and 2015
M w 6.4 Pishan earthquakes (Grandin et al., 2016; Solaro et al.,
2016; Wen et al., 2016).
We generate interferograms for both the ascending and
descending tracks (T018A and T040D) using the traditional
two-pass differential InSAR method (e.g., Hanssen, 2001). All
three subswaths within a satellite pass are combined to achieve
an efficient coverage of the coseismic deformation. We use the
commercial processing software GAMMA (Werner et al.,
2000), with geometric alignment based on precise orbit deter-
mination (SAR orbit data; see Data and Resources). Because
straightforward interpolation of the slave image results in
banding with each burst, deramping the single look complex
(SLC)-format images is done prior to interpolation to over-
come limitations of large phase mismatches (Xu et al., 2016).
We adopt the 90-m resolution Shuttle Radar Topography Mis-
sion digital elevation model to remove topographic phases
(Farr et al., 2007). Finally, the interferograms are filtered using
a power spectrum filter algorithm (Goldstein and Werner,
1998) to reduce the effects of phase noise, and they are un-
wrapped using the SNAPHU algorithm (Chen and Zebker,
2000). The unwrapped and geocoded interferograms have 90-m
resolution and represent range changes in the direction of line-
of-sight (LOS) of the surface toward the satellite (Fig. 2a,b and
Ⓔ Fig. S1, available in the electronic supplement to this article).
Because of short perpendicular baselines for the pairs of images,
there are no visible phase ramps in the resulting interferograms.
The interferograms are shown in Figure 2, and they resolve
one incomplete lobe of coseismic deformation onshore. Even
though the coseismic deformation offshore is invisible by In-
SAR, the onshore surface displacements are sufficient to con-
strain the coseismic slip in this earthquake, as we show later.
Compared to the ascending interferogram, the descending in-
terferogram shows a clearer pattern of surface displacements
because the descending image pairs are separated by a shorter
time span, resulting in a higher degree of coherence. The stan-
dard deviations of the LOS measurements in the region of the
interferograms away from the prominent coseismic deforma-
tion (e.g., about 1° S and 1° N; Ⓔ Fig. S1) are 8.2 and
3.7 mm for the ascending and descending interferograms, re-
spectively. We take these standard deviations as lower bounds
on the uncertainties of the interferometric data and set the
uncertainty of the LOS measurements to be 18 and 6 mm
for the ascending and descending interferograms, respectively.
We note that range direction in the descending interferogram

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▴ Figure 2. Coseismic interferograms of the (a) descending Sentinel-1A track T040D and the (b) ascending track T018A. Synthetic in-
terferograms on the (c) descending and (d) ascending tracks of the best-fit uniform slip-fault-plane solution; red barbed line represents
the surface trace of the modeled fault plane. Residual interferograms in (e) descending and (f) ascending geometries. Black line is the
subduction trench. Each contour on the interferograms indicates 0.05 m increment in displacement.

is approximately normal to the strike of the fault, which yields
its maximum LOS offset of 73 cm, nearly double the maximum
offset (33 cm) in the ascending interferograms (Fig. 2a,b).
To reduce the computational burden when jointly inverting
the two interferograms for coseismic slip, we subsample both
interferograms using the QuadTree algorithm (Yan et al., 2013),
resulting in two data sets of 552 and 568 samples from the as-
cending and descending interferograms, respectively.
COSEISMIC SLIP MODEL
We determined the coseismic slip from the InSAR data in two
steps. First, we use a nonlinear inversion to constrain the fault
geometry, assuming uniform slip on a rectangular fault. Second,
we invert the InSAR data for the distribution of coseismic slip,
assuming either the fault plane determined in the first step or
using a strike from the focal mechanism solutions of this earth-
quake. We assume that the fault is embedded in a Poisson half-
space with shear modulus 32 GPa (Okada, 1992). We discuss
the resolution of these data and the ramifications of using a
homogeneous elastic half-space on the inferred slip distribution
in the Discussion section.
We first determine the fault geometry through the
method of Clarke et al. (1997). We assume uniform slip on a
rectangular fault plane, solving for fault strike, dip, length, and
width, as well as slip magnitude and rake. The method of
Clarke et al. (1997) uses a simplex search algorithm, starting
from an initial solution. We construct 100 initial models with
strike, dip, and rake randomly sampled from Gaussian proba-
bility density functions (PDFs) with means corresponding to
the strike, dip, and rake of the nodal plane corresponding to
the megathrust in the USGS focal mechanism and standard
deviations of 15°. We randomly choose the fault length, width,
and slip in the initial models from Gaussian PDFs with means
given by dimensions consistent with the USGS magnitude
(80 km × 35 km × 2:5 m) and standard deviations of 1 m in
slip, 20 km in length, and 15 km in depth. After 50 restarts in
the simplex search, each initial model results in a unique sol-
ution, and we take the collection of final models obtained to
indicate the dependence on the initial starting models in the

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Table 2
Source Parameters of the 2016 Ecuador Earthquake
Longitude Latitude Strike Dip Rake Depth Length Width Slip Moment Rms
Model (°) (°) (°) (°) (°) (km) (km) (km) (m) (×1020 N·m) M w (cm)
USGS-BW −79.926 0.352 26 16 113 20.6 – – – 7.054 7.8 –
Global −80.35 −0.16 26 23 123 24.1 – – – 5.530 7.8 –
CMT-SW
USM −80.97 0.03 8.7 17.1 110.7 – 80.8 28.3 2.54 6.32 7.83 5.8
±0.04 ±0.01 ±1.2 ±0.7 ±1.9 – ±0.5 ±1.6 ±0.06
Reference −80.97* 0.03* 8.7* 17.1* 106.7 – 180 140 2.48† 7.86 7.90 5.1
model
Preferred −80.97* 0.03* 26.0 17.1* 123.1 180 140 2.56† 7.15 7.87 4.1
model
Source Parameters of the 2016 Ecuador Earthquake Determined from the U.S. Geological Survey Body-Wave (USGS-BW) Focal
Mechanisms, the Global Centroid Moment Tensor (Global CMT) Surface-Wave Focal Mechanisms (Global CMT-SW), the Nonlinear
Inversion Assuming Uniform Slip Model (USM, Best-Fitting Parameters Are Given, along with the Standard Deviations of the Parameters
from the 100 Nonlinear Inversions Started with Unique Initial Models), a Linear Inversion Solving for the Distribution of Slip on the Best-
Fitting Fault Geometry in the Uniform Slip Model (Reference Model; Ⓔ Fig. S5), and a Linear Inversion Using the Focal Mechanism Strike
(Preferred Model; Fig. 3). Rms is root mean square between observation and simulation with model.
*The value is taken from the best-fitting USM model
†Maximum slip.

nonlinear inversion (Clarke et al., 1997). Most surprisingly, our
best-fit uniform slip model has a more north–south strike than
either the USGS or Global CMT focal mechanisms (Table 2;
Ⓔ Fig. S1), and the 100 solutions from each chain of the non-
linear inversion all have strikes at least 10° more northerly from
the focal mechanism solutions (Ⓔ Fig. S2).
We next invert for the distribution of coseismic slip as-
suming a planar fault geometry. As the best-fitting strike
found in the above nonlinear inversion is quite different from
the strike of the trench, we consider two fault geometries. In
both cases, the faults dip 17.1° to the east, which is the best
dip obtained in the nonlinear inversions above, and we as-
sume fault lengths and widths of 180 and 140 km, respec-
tively, and divide the faults into 10 × 10 km fault patches
(for a total of 252 patches). We separately consider two fault
strikes, either a strike of 8.7°, the best fault strike obtained in
the nonlinear inversions above, or a strike of 26°, which is the
strike of the nodal plane corresponding to the trench in the
USGS and Global CMT focal mechanism solutions (Table 2).
Because the primary mechanism of the earthquake was thrust
(revealed by both the moment tensor solution and the slip
rake in our best-fit uniform slip model), we constrain the slip
rake within 85°–135°. We linearly invert for slip on each of
the two fault planes, assuming a second-order smoothing to
avoid unphysical oscillation of inferred slip, determining the
penalty parameter on the regularization through a standard
L-curve analysis (Ⓔ Fig. S3; e.g., Aster et al., 2013). We find
that the solution using a strike of 26° is slightly better than
using the strike found in the nonlinear inversions above (root
mean square error of 4.1 cm vs. 5.1 cm), with no clear
differences in the residuals of the downsampled interfero-
grams. From this, we conclude that the InSAR alone, even
with both ascending and descending orbits, cannot uniquely
resolve the strike of the fault. There is a trade-off between the
strike and inferred slip rake in these two models, with mean
coseismic rake weighted by the slip magnitude of 123° and
107° (90° corresponding to pure thrust motion of hanging
wall) using a strike of 26° or 8.7°, respectively, both of which
are consistent with the footwall moving about N83°E. That
this footwall direction is coincident with the plate conver-
gence and is independent of assumed fault strike indicates
that there is minimal, if any, slip partitioning of the subduc-
tion convergence in this earthquake.
We take the coseismic slip model with strike of 26° as our
preferred coseismic slip model (Figs. 3a and 4; we show the
coseismic slip model and data fits using an 8.7° strike in Ⓔ
Figs. S5 and S6). The preferred model contains a relatively
compact region of oblique-thrust slip, with maximum slip of
about 2.5 m at a depth of just under 20 km (corresponding to
about 65 km along the dip direction along the fault plane),
with slip extending down to about 35 km depth (∼120 km
along dip). We infer a decrease in slip toward the trench, with
under 2 m of slip at the trench; however, the resolution near
the trench is the poorest with these onshore data, a point we
address in the Discussion section. Our preferred coseismic slip
model yields a geodetic moment of 7:15 × 1020 N·m, equiva-
lent to M w 7.87. The moment of our preferred model is
slightly higher than the USGS or Global CMT solutions,
although we note that the ascending and descending interfero-
grams contain 6 and 8 days, respectively, of the postseismic
period and thus may contain a minor amount of ground
deformation due to postseismic deformation.

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▴ Figure 3. (a) Coseismic slip model determined from the interferograms in Figure 2, assuming a fault location and dip determined in the
nonlinear inversion and using the fault strike of 26° taken from the USGS and Global CMT focal mechanism solutions. Arrows show the
sense of motion of the hanging wall, and contours are labeled in meters. (b) Standard deviation of 100 coseismic slip models, each inferred
by adding random noise to the original interferograms prior to inversion.

DISCUSSION function of the interferograms, to the original interferograms,

Although the 2016 M w 7.8 Ecuador earthquake is the sixth
major megathrust earthquake (M w > 7) since the 1906
M w 8.8 Colombia–Ecuador earthquake, it is the largest mega-
thrust earthquake in Ecuador with coseismic slip to be mapped
by InSAR data. Owing to the wide coverage (up to 250 km)
and short satellite repeat time (12 days), the TOPS mode of the
Sentinel-1A satellite provides an excellent image of the coseis-
mic deformation in both the descending and ascending orbits.
In comparison with the 70 GPS continuous stations in Ecua-
dor (Mothes et al., 2013), the InSAR measurements are
spatially dense and fully cover the coseismic deformation of
this large earthquake with high precision. In addition, the orbit
accuracy of Sentinel-1A has been improved in contrast to
advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) data, so the orbital
phase ramp is insignificant and can be easily removed using a
constant offset or simple linear model (Feng et al., 2016).
Resolution of Near-Trench Coseismic Slip
The 2016 earthquake generated a minor tsunami (e.g., Ye et al.,
2016). We do resolve about 1–2 m of coseismic slip near the
trench, although it is important to note that with these
onshore data our resolution is the poorest near the trench. To
illustrate the degree to which these data are able to constrain
the coseismic slip near the trench, (1) we assess the error in our
slip model using a Monte Carlo-based resampling technique
(e.g., Parsons et al., 2006), (2) we invert synthetic slip models
with and without near-trench coseismic slip, and (3) we rein-
vert for coseismic slip using a layered elastic structure. To
estimate the uncertainty in our inferred slip, we add 100 real-
izations of correlated noise, simulated using the 1D covariance
and then invert those interferograms for the coseismic slip. We
then compute the standard deviation of the coseismic slip in
the 100 resulting slip models to quantify the uncertainty in
each subfault. We find that the standard deviation of slip is
less than 2 cm over most of the fault but increases to just under
3 cm near the trench (Fig. 3b; Ⓔ Fig. S5b). In a synthetic
sensitivity test (sensitivity tests are described in the Ⓔ elec-
tronic supplement), we find that when coseismic slip is
constrained to end 40 km from the trench along the mega-
thrust, we infer about 1 m of coseismic slip near the trench
using onshore geodetic data (Ⓔ Fig. S7). The inferred slip in
this sensitivity test is about half the magnitude of largest near-
trench slip in our preferred model, suggesting that not all of the
near-trench slip in our preferred model is due to lack of data
resolution. Using a layered elastic structure instead of the
homogeneous elastic half-space we assumed in our preferred
slip model (Fig. 3), we infer less slip near the trench (just over
10 cm lower magnitude slip) and slightly more slip extending
to the north (Ⓔ Fig. S8; details of the elastic structure are
presented in the Ⓔ electronic supplement). Based on the three
points discussed here, we conclude that our coseismic model is
consistent with slip extending to the trench, although we can-
not uniquely constrain the magnitude of near-trench slip with
these data alone.
The 2016 Earthquake in Context of Past Seismicity
Our inferred coseismic slip for the 2016 earthquake coincides
with the region of the megathrust that slipped in the
1942 M 7.8 earthquake (Fig. 5). Swenson and Beck (1996)
inferred that the 1942 earthquake ruptured a region about
50 km × 50 km, based on their source time function of

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▴ Figure 4. Modeled interferograms for the (a) descending track T040D and (b) ascending track T018A predicted by the slip model in
Figure 3a and the associated residuals of the observed interferograms in Figure 2c,d. The red line is the trace of the model fault plane, and
the white dashed lines represent the surface projections of the modeled fault. Each contour indicates a 0.05-m increment in displacement.
These interferograms are also shown wrapped in Ⓔ Figure S4 (available in the electronic supplement to this article).

the earthquake and an assumed rupture velocity of 2:0 km=s.
Using this rupture size, however, the average slip would need
to be greater than 8 m to match the moment (Swenson and
Beck, 1996). If on the other hand, we assume uniform slip of
2.0 m, consistent with the slip we infer for this earthquake,
then a region of the megathrust with radius about 50 km
would be required to have ruptured to match the moment. A
50-km circle approximating the 1942 earthquake roughly cor-
responds to the region in which we infer more than 1.0 m of
slip in our preferred model (Fig. 5). The largest MMI (IX)
in the 1942 earthquake was reported to be just to the south
of the epicenter, with MMI ≥ VIII over the coastal region

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▴ Figure 5. Preferred coseismic slip model of the 2016 Ecuador
earthquake (contours) and Global CMT centroid location (gold
star), along with approximate region of the megathrust that
slipped in the 1942 earthquake (Swenson and Beck, 1996), rep-
resented as either 25 or 50 km radius circles with either ∼9 or
2.2 m of uniform slip, respectively (black circles). Blue dots
are the relocated aftershocks of the 1942, 1958, and 1979 earth-
quakes (Mendoza and Dewey, 1984); gold dots are two months of
aftershocks of the 2016 earthquake from ISC (see Data and Re-
sources); black line is the trench; yellow squares are prominent
Ecuadorian cities; black dashed line is the modified Mercalli in-
tensity (MMI) VIII contour of the 1942 earthquake (Swenson and
Beck, 1996); and reported MMI in the 2016 earthquake are indi-
cated in black roman numerals (USGS).
(Swenson and Beck, 1996; Fig. 5). MMI reported in the 2016
earthquake was lower (maximum MMI of VIII to the east
and slightly north of the epicenter; USGS, see Data and Re-
sources), and falling to IV at Quito (Fig. 5), likely indicating
that the details of the slip distribution in these two earth-
quakes differed.
Assuming that the 2016 and 1942 events represent failure
within the same asperity, which also ruptured during the 1906
earthquake, an interesting question is whether the cumulative
amount of slip in these two events matches the accumulated
slip deficit since 1906. With a convergence rate of 56 mm=yr
(e.g., García Cano et al., 2014), there has been just over 6 m of
slip deficit accumulated on the megathrust over the 110 years
since the great 1906 earthquake. An earthquake with uniform
slip of about 3 m over a ∼40
km radius circular patch is equiv-
alent to a moment magnitude 7.8 (∼50 km radius for M 7.9).
Although this slip is larger than the maximum slip we infer in
the 2016 earthquake, it is important to note that the imposed
smoothing regularization likely results in underestimated slip
over a broader region of the fault. It may also be likely, espe-
8 Seismological Research Letters Volume 88, Number 2A
cially given the differences between reported MMI in this and
the 1942 events, that details of the coseismic slip in each of the
events were not exactly the same, as also concluded by Ye et al.
(2016). Even if there are differences in the exact pattern of slip
in the 1942 and 2016 earthquakes, it is reasonable to assume
that these two earthquakes involved slip within the same asper-
ity given the overlap in slip in the two earthquakes and the fact
that on average the slip in these two earthquakes are consistent
with 110 years of slip deficit.
White et al. (2003) argued that the megathrust offshore
Ecuador was only ∼50% locked, based on onshore GPS data. It
is worth noting that although White et al. (2003) concluded
that only part of the convergence was accommodated by slip in
large megathrust earthquakes, they only considered a slip mag-
nitude of the 1942 earthquake determined by Swenson and
Beck (1996) by assuming uniform slip over the entire after-
shock zone. However, Swenson and Beck (1996) argued that
the aftershock zone is likely much larger than the region that
slipped in 1942 and thus that slip was likely higher than 1.2 m
if the entire aftershock region coseismically slipped. In the
2016 earthquake, aftershocks also extended to the north of the
coseismic slip, well past Esmeraldas, Ecuador (Fig. 5). Chlieh
et al. (2014) found that the region corresponding to the 1942
earthquake was also only partially coupled, although there was
a fair amount of variability of the exact coupling depending on
the regularization. The partially locked view of this region in
Chlieh et al. (2014) is seemingly contradictory to our above ar-
gument of a single locked asperity that ruptured in the 1942 and
2016 earthquakes, which also likely ruptured in the great 1906
earthquake. However, it is important to note that this region
suffers from a relative paucity of data, with only three GPS sta-
tions farther from the coast around the equator. The poor res-
olution of the GPS data is perhaps manifested in the large range
of inferred coupling that Chlieh et al. (2014) find in the vicinity
of the 1942 epicenter among the various regularizations they
considered (compare to fig. 5 of Chlieh et al., 2014).
It is important to note that we are unlikely to resolve
subtle variations in coseismic slip using these InSAR data and
the level of smoothing chosen in our inversions. The USGS
finite-slip model and the model of Ye et al. (2016), both of
which rely on seismological data, infer more heterogeneous
coseismic slip in the 2016 earthquake than we infer. In the
extreme case in which the coseismic slip is constrained in two
small patches separated by 20 km, using synthetic interfero-
grams and the smoothing constraints in our preferred model,
we cannot resolve these two distinct slip patches in a sensitivity
test (Ⓔ Fig. S4), suggesting that subtle variations in the slip as
inferred by Ye et al. (2016) would not be resolved by only the
onshore interferograms.
The region located between the 1942 and 1958 events has
been devoid of major seismicity, and this seismic gap has been
suggested to have potential for future ruptures (e.g., Papadimi-
triou, 1993; Beauval et al., 2013; Chlieh et al., 2014; García
Cano et al., 2014). As the recent 2016 earthquake also did
not rupture this seismic gap, there may be an ongoing earth-
quake risk within the seismic gap. It is interesting to note that
March/April 2017
 SRL Early Edition
aftershocks of both the 1942 and 2016 earthquakes extend over
this seismic gap (Mendoza and Dewey, 1984; Swenson and
Beck, 1996; Fig. 5), and Chlieh et al. (2014) observed the meg-
athrust in this region being at least partially coupled. Ongoing
geodetic observations, particularly InSAR measurements with
higher spatial coverage than GPS, can test for the presence of
afterslip within the seismic gap following the 2016 earthquake
and thereby help resolve the degree to which strain is accumu-
lating in the region to the north of the 1942/2016 earthquake.
CONCLUSION
We obtain interferograms showing ground deformation during
the 2016 M w 7.8 Ecuador earthquake, along descending and
ascending Sentinel-1 SAR orbits. We invert these interfero-
grams to infer an image of coseismic slip in this earthquake. We
find oblique thrust slip, with maximum slip about 2.5 m. Co-
seismic slip over 2 m is in the depth range of about 10–25 km,
with the maximum slip at about 20-km depth. Our results
suggest that there is little, if any, partitioning of the oblique
plate convergence. The coseismic slip in the 2016 earthquake
is coincident with the region inferred by Swenson and Beck
(1996) to have slipped in the M w 7.8 1942 earthquake. The
reported MMI in the two events differ, suggesting that
although the 2016 earthquake involves the failure of the same
asperity that ruptured in the 1942 earthquake, there may be
some differences in the details of slip in the two earthquakes.
Assuming the 1906, 1942, and 2016 events, all ruptured the
same asperity (with the larger 1906 earthquake also involving
slip on multiple asperities), the average repeat time for failure
of this asperity is 55 years. This estimate should be taken with
caution, because it is simply the mean of two repeat times. A
recurrence time of 55 yrs is much shorter than 140  30 yrs
suggested by Chlieh et al. (2014), although is in line with
repeat times suggested by Nishenko (1991) for nearby seg-
ments for which more are known. If repeat times of other
nearby asperities are similar to this, the Esmeraldas region
near the 1958 earthquake is also a likely candidate for a future
earthquake.
DATA AND RESOURCES
The Sentinel-1A SAR data were downloaded from the Senti-
nel-1A Scientific Data Hub (https://vertex.daac.asf.alaska.
edu/, last accessed June 2016). The moment tensor solution is
from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS; http://earthquake.
usgs.gov, last accessed August 2016) and Global Centroid Mo-
ment Tensor Project (Global CMT; http://www.globalcmt.org ,
last accessed August 2016; Fig. 1). The aftershock locations are
from International Seismological Centre (ISC; http://www.isc.
ac.uk, last accessed August 2016). The 2016 Ecuador earth-
quake report is from http://earthquake-report.com (last ac-
cessed June 2016). The details on the International Disaster
Database (EM-DAT), Centre for Research on the Epidemiol-
ogy of Disaster, can be found at http://www.emdat.be/ (last
accessed October 2016). SAR orbit data can be found at
Seismological Research Letters
https://www.unavco.org/data/imaging/sar/lts1/winsar/s1qc/
aux_poeorb/ (last accessed August 2016).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All figures were generated using Generic Mapping Tools
(GMT). This work is supported by National Natural Science
Foundation of China (41204001, 41274037, and 41431069),
China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2015M57228), the
Basic Fund of Hubei Subsurface Multi-scale Imaging Key Lab-
oratory, Institute of Geophysics and Geomatics, China Univer-
sity of Geosciences,Wuhan (SMIL-2015-01), the Fundamental
Research Funds for National Universities (CUGL150810),
and the Basic Research Fund of Key Laboratory of Geospace
Environment and Geodesy, Ministry of Education of China
(13-02-11 and 14-01-01). Ping He is a visiting scientist at
the University of Michigan, sponsored by the State Scholarship
Fund of China.
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Ping He1
Qi Wang
Rong Zou
Hubei Subsurface Multi-scale Imaging Key Laboratory
Institute of Geophysics and Geomatics
China University of Geosciences
Wuhan 430074, China
wangqi@cug.edu.cn
Eric A. Hetland
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 U.S.A.
ehetland@umich.edu
Kaihua Ding
Faculty of Information Engineering
China University of Geosciences
Wuhan 430074, China
Yangmao Wen
School of Geodesy and Geomatics
Wuhan University
Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China
Published Online 25 January 2017
1
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Mich-
igan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 U.S.A.
March/April 2017