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The complex evolution of continental rift systems results from the intricate interplay of external driving forces and the rift system’s responses. For this reason, allowing plate kinematics to emerge from the force balance can provide deeper insights than imposing prescribed velocity boundary conditions. This study investigates the influence of temporally varying driving forces, possibly resulting from changes in slab dynamics, on rift evolution using numerical and semi-analytical models. Our results show that a continental rift can accelerate towards breakup even when it is currently extending slowly due to a reduced driving force that can arise from many different situations.

The 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake caused significant post-seismic (PS) deformations in a broad region in East Asia including the southern Korean Peninsula (SKP). In this study, we aim to better characterize the PS deformations in the SKP and understand the underlying physical mechanisms for them using linear Maxwell viscoelastic numerical models. We computed the annual mean velocities by applying the extended linear trend modelling technique to the publicly available Global Navigation Satellite System data. We then derived yearly PS deformation rates for the first five years after the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake using a least-square collocation method. Our findings, along with the tectonic history of the SKP, suggest that the regions of elevated “true postseismic” maximum shear strain rates might have thinner or weakened lithosphere, which can be one of the consequences of the pervasive granitic intrusions in those regions.