Although scientists were not entirely surprised by the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, 2025, the event is a stark reminder that similar active structures exist — like the Philippine Fault.
By Mario Aurelio, Abigail Manahan, Sandra Donna Catugas, Micko Chad Lee Palma and Andrei Marc Calma, Structural Geology and Tectonics Laboratory, University of Philippines National Institute of Geological Sciences, Philippines
Citation: Aurelio, M., Manahan, A., Catugas, S. D., Palma, M. C. L., Calma, A. M., 2025, Beware quiet segments of the Philippine Fault, Temblor, http://doi.org/10.32858/temblor.364
On March 28, 2025, at around 12:51 p.m.(6:21 a.m. GMT), central Myanmar was struck by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake (Toda and Stein, 2025). The epicenter was located near the city of Mandalay. The event was shallow, with a focal depth of 10 kilometers. The culprit is the Sagaing Fault, a 1,500-kilometer-long right-lateral strike-slip fault that cuts through the entire length of Myanmar — from the eastern foothills of the Himalayan range to the north down to Yangon Bay in the south.
The earthquake inflicted heavy damage to infrastructure not only in Myanmar, but also in areas located as far as 1,000 kilometers away. For example, in Bangkok, Thailand, a high-rise building under construction collapsed. In Ho Chi Min, Vietnam, located about 1,250 kilometers to the southeast, 40 apartment buildings were affected (Quỳnh, M., 2025).
As a direct result of the earthquake, more than 5,000 have died in Myanmar, along with tens of thousands injured and hundreds missing. About 60 persons were reported to have died in Bangkok (Naewnanews, 2025). These events demonstrate the notoriety of earthquakes originating on-shore strike-slip faults. Within a radius of more than 1,000 kilometers, they can cause infrastructure damage, kill hundreds of individuals, and injure tens of thousands more.
Several similar faults exist around the world, such as the San Andreas Fault in California, the North and East Anatolian Faults in Turkey, the Alpine Fault in New Zealand, the Great Sumatran Fault in Indonesia, and the Red River Fault in China. All of these faults pass through heavy population centers, and the associated infrastructure of those communities is potentially vulnerable to damage.
The Philippines has its own such fault — the 1,500-kilometer-long Philippine Fault. In the discussion that follows, we compare and contrast the Sagaing Fault with the Philippine Fault. We also consider the potential of the latter to generate an earthquake of a similar or even stronger magnitude to the March 28 quake in Myanmar. Parameters for such a scenario can serve as inputs to earthquake preparedness and disaster mitigation efforts so that the population is ready, should such an earthquake indeed happen in the future.
Sagaing Fault—a strike-slip plate boundary
The Sagaing Fault defines one of the boundaries between the Indian and Eurasian Plates. As the Indian Plate moves northward, it collides with the Eurasian Plate, forming the Himalayan range. At its eastern edge, however, the Indian Plate slides horizontally past a section of the relatively immobile Eurasian Plate. This boundary is the Sagaing Fault, and it moves in a right-lateral, or dextral sense. This means that an observer standing on one tectonic block could see the other block across the fault move to the right.
The behavior of these tectonic blocks may be explained by extrusion tectonics, a generally-accepted model proposed by Tapponier et al. (1982). In that model, strike-slip faults play a major role. In this scenario, the block from the relatively stable plate (Eurasia) is broken up and squeezed, or extruded, in response to the colliding plate (India).
The Philippine Fault—a major sinistral fault
The Philippine Fault, like the Sagaing Fault, is a major strike-slip fault that has generated numerous large earthquakes in the recent past. Although it moves sinistrally (or left-laterally) — opposite the sense of motion of the Sagaing Fault — the Philippine Fault is of similar length. At 1,500 kilometers, it traverses the entire length of the Philippine archipelago from north to south (Figure 1).
Unlike the Sagaing Fault, the Philippine Fault is not a direct product of extrusion tectonics initiated by the collision of the Indian Plate with the Eurasian Plate as envisaged by the model of Tapponier et al. (1982). Instead, it has evolved independently through shear partitioning, first in its northern segment in northern Luzon, followed later in its central and southern segments (Aurelio, 2000).
In detail, the Philippine Fault can be divided into three major segments, namely the northern (13.5° N to 18.5° N latitude), central (10.0° N to 13.5° N latitude) and southern (6.0° to 10.0° N latitude) segments. The northern segment traverses much of the main island of Luzon, the home of the capital city of Manila. The central segment crosses the Visayan islands of Masbate and Leyte. The southern segment slices the island of Mindanao (Figure 1). Unlike the almost-straight geometry of the Sagaing Fault’s trace, the Philippine Fault follows a sinusoidal form, striking roughly northerly in its two extremes (northern and southern segments), and turning northwesterly in the middle (central segment).
The structural and tectonic nature of the Philippine Fault has been studied as early as the 1930s (e.g., Repetti, 1935; Willis, 1944; Allen, 1962; Rutland, 1968; Nakata et al., 1977; Barcelona, 1981). More recently, independent but coordinated studies have been undertaken to better understand the behavior of the fault in each of the three segments (Maleterre, 1989; Pinet, 1990; Ringenbach, 1992; Aurelio, 1992; Quebral, 1994; Punongbayan, 2001; Bacolcol, 2003).
The Philippine Sea Plate moves in a northwesterly fashion at a rate of around eight centimeters per year with respect to the Philippine Mobile Belt (Seno, 1977; Rangin et al., 1999; Figure 1). The Philippine Mobile Belt comprises most of the islands of the Philippine archipelago, except for the island of Palawan, portions of the islands of Mindoro, Panay and western Mindanao, which all belong to the North Palawan and Sunda microcontinental blocks of the Eurasian Plate. The Philippine Mobile Belt is so-named because it forms an elongated shape like a belt from Luzon to Mindanao, and is very tectonically mobile.
In contrast, the North Palawan and Sunda Blocks are rigid and relatively stationary (Aurelio and Peña, 2010). The Philippine Mobile Belt is surrounded by six active subduction zones. In the east, the Philippine Trench and the East Luzon Trough subduct westward, while in the west, the Manila Trench, Negros Trench, Sulu Trench and Cotabato Trench subduct eastward (Figure 1).
The Philippine Trench runs along a north-northwesterly orientation. Because the Philippine Sea Plate moves northwesterly, it converges with the Philippine Mobile Belt obliquely (not perpendicularly) along the Philippine Trench (Figure 1). This oblique convergence creates a right triangle where the hypotenuse corresponds to the Philippine Sea Plate motion vector, which needs to be decomposed into two components, namely; one component perpendicular to the trench (base of the triangle), the other parallel to the Philippine Fault (height of the triangle). The “shear” introduced by the oblique convergence between the Philippine Plate and the Philippine Mobile Belt is thus said to be “partitioned” along the Philippine Trench (the trench-perpendicular component) and the Philippine Fault (the fault-parallel component).
This branching likely evolved from a single-stranded fault. On the other side of the Philippines, in the Middle Miocene (about 15 million years ago), the South China Sea ceased open and started to subduct eastward beneath the Philippine Mobile Belt (Pinet, 1990; Pinet and Cobbold, 1992). In this early phase, the oblique subduction meant that shear stress was partitioned between the Manilla Trench and the newly initiated Philippine Fault. As oblique convergence continued, the Philippine fault formed several branches in a westward progression (Maleterre, 1989).
The northern segment of the Philippine Fault bifurcates into at least four branches, namely from east to west: Digdig Fault, Tebbo-Abra River Fault, Tuba Fault, and San Manuel-Vigan-Aggao Fault. The easternmost branch of the Philippine Fault, the Digdig Fault, was responsible for the magnitude 7.7 earthquake of Northern Luzon on July 16, 1990 (Ringenbach, 1991; 1992; Ringenbach et al., 1992; Punongbayan et al., 1992).
By the start of the Pliocene (about 5 million years ago), the kinematic reorganization of the Philippine Sea Plate involved a shift from an initially northerly to a northwesterly motion (Angelier and Huchon, 1986; Barrier, 1985; Huchon, 1985). This shift created the central and southern segments of the Philippine Fault, which partnered with the Philippine Trench in accommodating the newly-created oblique convergence between the Philippine Sea Plate and the Philippine Mobile Belt (Aurelio, 1992; Aurelio, 2000; Barrier et al., 1990; 1991). Since then, the more than 1,500- kilometer-long Philippine Fault system became what we observe today.
Slip rates along the Philippine Fault vary from north to south, but within the same order of magnitude of a few centimeters per year. In the northern segment in Luzon Island, the fault is estimated to slip at a rate of around 3.5 centimeters per year (Ringenbach, 1992). The central segment, in Masbate and Leyte, sees slip rates between 2.5 to 3.5 centimeters per year (Aurelio, 1992; Duquesnoy et al., 1994; Bacolcol, 2003; Bacolcol et al., 2005) based on GPS campaigns. In its southern segment on Mindanao Island, the fault appears to slow down to as low as 1.0 centimeter per year as the strike-slip structure transitions into the Mollucas Sea collision zone (Quebral, 1994; Quebral et al., 1996; Aurelio et al., 1998).
The Philippine Fault today
At present, the Philippine Fault is active throughout its entire length of more than 1,500 kilometers. A review of seismic events using information from instrumentally recorded data (GCMT, 2025; PHIVOLCS, 2025; USGS, 2025) indicates that the Philippine Fault system has generated more than 60 earthquakes with magnitude 5.0 or greater in the last 50 or so years. This yields an average of more than 1.2 magnitude 5.0 or greater earthquakes per year. Of the 60 or so earthquakes in 52 years, around 10 have been destructive, or an average repeat interval of one destructive Philippine Fault-generated earthquake every 5 years. Some details and salient observations during these destructive earthquakes are summarized in Table 1, from the earliest to the most recent.
Stress evolution: earthquake triggering and seismic gaps
To understand the stress evolution along the Philippine Fault, analysis of historical seismicity and Coulomb stress transfer modeling were conducted to create seismotectonic maps and a time-sequence model of Coulomb stress transfer along the fault from the year 1973 up to the present (Figure 3). Seismicity and active fault data were collected from the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS). Data from Global Centroid Moment Tensor (GCMT) and United States Geological Survey (USGS) were used to supplement earthquake records.
We collected data from a total of 64 earthquakes that were at least magnitude 5.0 that have occurred since 1973 (Figure 1). Earthquakes that occurred after 1976 have instrumentally recorded data, and so focal mechanisms and source parameters for 62 events (e.g., strike, dip, and rake) were obtained from the GCMT.
Two earthquakes occurred prior to 1976. For those events, focal mechanisms and associated fault parameters come from previous work. For instance, parameters for the 1973 magnitude 7.5 Ragay Gulf earthquake were adopted from Cardwell et al. (1980).
Of the 64 earthquakes, 13 were of magnitude 6.0 or greater (Figure 2). These 13 earthquakes were used for Coulomb stress transfer modeling using Coulomb 3.3 (Toda et al., 2011), as shown in Figure 3. For two of the 13 events, we were unable to use source parameters and focal mechanisms from the GCMT, and instead obtained regional stress graphically from the events’ nodal plane parameters (i.e., 1990 magnitude 6.0 Luzon and 1983 magnitude 6.0 Caraga events).
We computed Coulomb stress changes on optimally oriented receiver strike-slip faults approximately at the depth of the earthquake source for all earthquakes, except for the two thrust faults of the 2022 Abra earthquakes. For those earthquakes, we used optimally oriented thrust faults as receiver faults.
Results of the Coulomb stress transfer modeling were synthesized in a single composite map to identify relationships and possible stress-triggering between large earthquake events along the Philippine Fault (Figure 2). The time-space evolution of stresses released and accumulated during earthquake events generated by different segments of the fault is presented in the form of a series of Coulomb stress transfer models with 10-year average intervals over a period of 50 years (1973-2023) (Figure 3).
We make the following observations:
1. Three earthquakes with the largest magnitudes (magnitude 7.0 or greater) have occurred on the northern segment of the Philippine Fault, on the island of Luzon. The epicenters of two of these earthquakes were located on land (magnitude 7.7 North Luzon earthquake of July 16, 1990 and magnitude 7.0 Abra earthquake of July 17, 2022), whereas the third was located offshore (magnitude 7.5 Ragay Gulf earthquake of March 17, 1973). The intervals between earthquakes were 17 and 32 years, or an average of 24.5 years in between events.
2. Earthquake triggering may be observed between the magnitude 7.7 July 16, 1990 Northern Luzon Earthquake and the two 2022 events — the July 27, 2022 magnitude 7.0 event and the October 25, 2022 magnitude 6.4 event. These two events lie within the stress increase shadow of the 1990 magnitude 7.7 event, 32 years prior to the 2022 events. Similarly, the magnitude 7.5 Ragay Gulf Earthquake of March 17,1973 appears to have promoted accumulation of stress in Masbate Island, probably triggering events of magnitude 6.0 or greater in 2003, 2020 and 2023.
3. The Masbate Segment has generated three earthquakes with magnitude 6.0 or greater within 20 years. Rupturing appears to be confined to a 40-kilometer stretch, suggesting likely influence of each earthquake over the other.
4. There appears to be a decreasing trend of magnitudes from north to south, with notable segments not having experienced earthquakes in the last 50 years, particularly in the Infanta Segment (Northern Philippine Fault), Southern Leyte Segment (Central Philippine Fault) and San Francisco, Agusan del Norte Segment (Southern Philippine Fault).
Comparisons, considerations and preparations
The March 28, 2025 Mandalay earthquake was generated by the rupture of a segment of the right-lateral Sagaing Fault in central eastern Myanmar. Using the Coulomb stress transfer code of Toda et al. (2011), previous authors (e.g., Xiong et al., 2017) have modeled the Mandalay segment to be a future site of an earthquake, given its relative quiescence during at least the last 30 years (Toda and Stein, 2025). In this sense, Xiong et al. (2017) were successful in forecasting the March 2025 rupture of the Mandalay segment of the Sagaing Fault.
The Mandalay earthquake demonstrates the power of the Coulomb stress transfer modeling technique in forecasting potential segments of faults that may rupture next. Such forecasts help guide efforts in seismic hazard mitigation, but these are also stark reminders that other similar active structures that contain fault segments that have been momentarily quiet could be the focus of the next big earthquake. In our Coulomb stress transfer modeling, we found that the time series maps along the left-lateral Philippine Fault demonstrate the ability of different segments of this structure to individually generate powerful earthquakes. Such events may cause massive infrastructure damage and deaths.
The Infanta Segment is notably important to monitor as it has received significant stress increases both from the magnitude 7.5 1973 Ragay Gulf and the magnitude 7.7 1990 North Luzon earthquakes (Figure 2, dashed ellipse). Metro Manila, with a population of more than 10 million, is approximately 60 kilometers away. Other areas along the Philippine Fault that have not experienced earthquakes in the last 50 years and where stresses have since been accumulating include the segments in Southern Leyte Segment (Central Philippine Fault) and San Francisco, Agusan del Norte Segment (Southern Philippine Fault) (Figure 2, dashed ellipse).
Population centers along the segments that are forecasted by the Coulomb stress transfer model to be potential sites of the next earthquake should thus prepare. Infrastructure development should adhere strictly to structural and building codes, while disaster preparedness protocol should be in place at all times.
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