The Mw 5.1 9 August 2020, Sparta earthquake, North Carolina: The first documented seismic surface rupture in the eastern United States

At 8:07 a.m. EDT on 9 Aug. 2020 a Mw 5.1 earthquake located ~3 km south of Sparta, North Carolina, USA, shook much of the eastern United States, producing the first documented surface rupture due to faulting east of the New Madrid seismic zone. The co-seismic surface rupture was identified along a 2-km-long traceable zone of predominantly reverse displacement, with folding and flexure generating a scarp averaging 8–10-cm-high with a maximum observed height of ~25 cm. Widespread deformation south of the main surface rupture includes cm-dm–long and mm-cm–wide fissures. Two trenches excavated across the surface rupture reveal that this earthquake propagated to the surface along a preexisting structure in the shallow bedrock, which had not been previously identified as an active fault.

Surface ruptures by faulting are rarely reported for M <6 earthquakes, and hence the Sparta earthquake provides an opportunity to improve seismic hazard knowledge associated with these moderate events. Furthermore, this earthquake occurred in a very low strain rate intraplate setting, where earthquake surface deformation, regardless of magnitude, is sparse in time and rare to observe and characterize.