subduction

Driven by the erupting lava, plates scrape past and collide with each other, and they can also dive beneath other plates and into the planet’s interior in a process called subduction.

The upgrade also would improve warnings for the Pacific Northwest and California’s North Coast, which are threatened by tsunamis from quakes along the Cascadia subduction zone.

"These splay faults are closer to the coast, so these tsunamis will be faster to hit the coastline than a tsunami generated only from a subduction zone earthquake."

This is a subduction zone off New Zealand's coast where slow slip events occur routinely, about once a year.

In addition, they show that their model accurately describes the rise in fluid pressure observed in the Nankai subduction zone near Japan after a series of small earthquakes in 2003.