List of earthquakes in the Philippines

Tectonic setting

Much of the Philippines lie within the area of strongly tectonised blocks of mainly island arc origin, known as the Philippine Mobile Belt. To the east, the Philippine Sea plate is subducting beneath the mobile belt along the line of the Philippine Trench and the East Luzon Trench at the northern end of the belt. The convergence across this boundary is strongly oblique and the strike-slip component is accommodated by movement on the left lateral Philippine fault system. To the south of the Philippines lies the Molucca Sea Collision Zone, which involves opposite facing subduction zones to either side of the Molucca Sea plate. To the west of the mobile belt the Sunda plate is subducting eastwards beneath the belt along the lines of the Manila, Negros and Cotabato trenches. Within the Sunda plate, the oceanic crust of the Sulu Sea is subducting beneath the Sulu Ridge along the Sulu Trench. The Sunda plate carries with it parts of the Palawan Microcontinental Block, which has collided with the mobile belt at the Negros and Cotabato trenches.

The continuing movement of the tectonic plates leads to active faulting within the mobile belt, such as on the left lateral Cotabato Fault System that cuts across Mindanao and the right lateral Marikina Valley fault system on Luzon.

Earthquakes

This list includes earthquakes in the Philippines with a magnitude of 6.0 or higher, unless a lower-magnitude earthquake resulted in significant damage and/or casualties.

Spanish period (pre-1900)

20th century

21st century

Deadliest earthquakes

Seismicity

Subduction zones

The subduction zones that surround most of the archipelago are the source of many of the larger earthquakes that strike the Philippines. This includes both faulting along the plate interfaces and within the subducting slabs. For the Philippine Trench, examples of those on the plate interface are the 1988 7.3 and the 2023 M7.6 events. The 1975 7.6 earthquake was caused by intra-slab normal faulting, while the 2012 M7.6 was a result of thrust faulting within the descending slab.

The relatively young Cotabato Trench subduction zone has been associated with several large megathrust earthquakes, including the 1918 Celebes Sea earthquake (M8.3), the 1976 Moro Gulf earthquake (M8.0) and the 2002 Mindanao earthquake (M7.5).

Strike-slip zones

The longest and most seismically active of the strike-slip structures is the 1200 km long Philippine Fault Zone. It carries the left lateral component of the oblique convergence at the Philippine Trench, with a current estimated slip-rate of 35 ± 4 mm per year on Leyte, reducing northwards to about 20 mm per year on Luzon. On Luzon, the fault zone splays out into a number of different faults, including the Digdig Fault. One of the largest historical earthquake on the fault zone was the 1990 Luzon 7.8 event that left nearly 2,000 people dead or missing. The same part of the fault zone is thought to have ruptured in the 1645 Luzon earthquake. Further south the fault ruptured during the 1973 Ragay Gulf earthquake.

In central Mindanao, the Cotabato fault system consists of a mixture of NW-SE trending left lateral and SW-NE trending right lateral strike-slip faults. Four of these ruptured in the 2019 Cotabato and Davao del Sur earthquakes, each generating events with magnitudes of 6.4 or greater.

Seismic hazard

Given the presence of major fault zones throughout the archipelago, any part of the Philippines may be affected by earthquakes, apart from parts of Palawan, where the seismic hazard risk is comparatively low. The greatest shaking hazard comes from shallow crustal faulting close to the Manila, Davao and Cebu metropolitan areas. Active reverse faults have 20 km wide zones of peak ground acceleration (PGA) 0.6g (acceleration due to gravity) for a 10% probability of exceedance (PoE) in a 50-year period, while active strike-slip faults have narrower zones centered around the fault traces at a similar level. All areas close to active subduction zones show increased hazard.

In Metro Manila the estimated hazard has a mean PGA of 0.32 g for a PoE of 10% in 50 years. The main hazard comes from shallow fault sources, such as the Marikina Valley Fault System, but there is an important contribution to the overall hazard from the Manila subduction zone to the west and the potential for strong shaking from earthquakes originating the Philippines Trench to the east. In Metro Cebu, the mean PGA is also 0.32 g for the same PoE and period. The hazard is dominated by shallow crustal fault zones from this area of ongoing compressional tectonics. Using the same parameters Metro Davao has the higher value of 0.45 g. The metropolitan area sits close to shallow faults of left lateral strike-slip and oblique reverse type, and these generate the greatest hazard, although a significant contribution comes from sources in the Halmahera and Philippine subduction zones.

References

References

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