Spatial Separation of Large Earthquakes, Aftershocks, and Background Seismicity: Analysis of Interseismic and Coseismic Seismicity Patterns in Southern California

Author(s):  
Egill Hauksson
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
pp. eaaz5691
Author(s):  
Kimberly Blisniuk ◽  
Katherine Scharer ◽  
Warren D. Sharp ◽  
Roland Burgmann ◽  
Colin Amos ◽  
...  

The San Andreas fault has the highest calculated time-dependent probability for large-magnitude earthquakes in southern California. However, where the fault is multistranded east of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, it has been uncertain which strand has the fastest slip rate and, therefore, which has the highest probability of a destructive earthquake. Reconstruction of offset Pleistocene-Holocene landforms dated using the uranium-thorium soil carbonate and beryllium-10 surface exposure techniques indicates slip rates of 24.1 ± 3 millimeter per year for the San Andreas fault, with 21.6 ± 2 and 2.5 ± 1 millimeters per year for the Mission Creek and Banning strands, respectively. These data establish the Mission Creek strand as the primary fault bounding the Pacific and North American plates at this latitude and imply that 6 to 9 meters of elastic strain has accumulated along the fault since the most recent surface-rupturing earthquake, highlighting the potential for large earthquakes along this strand.


2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 83-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Goltz

Abstract. Seismicity is a distributed process of great spatial and temporal variability and complexity. Efforts to characterise and describe the evolution of seismicity patterns have a long history. Today, the detection of changes in the spatial distribution of seismicity is still regarded as one of the most important approaches in monitoring and understanding seismicity. The problem of how to best describe these spatio-temporal changes remains, also in view of the detection of possible precursors for large earthquakes. In particular, it is difficult to separate the superimposed effects of different origin and to unveil the subtle (precursory) effects in the presence of stronger but irrelevant constituents. I present an approach to the latter two problems which relies on the Principal Components Analysis (PCA), a method based on eigen-structure analysis, by taking a time series approach and separating the seismicity rate patterns into a background component and components of change. I show a sample application to the Southern California area and discuss the promising results in view of their implications, potential applications and with respect to their possible precursory qualities.


Author(s):  
Aleksandr Emanov ◽  
Aleksey Emanov ◽  
Aleksandr Fateev

The Bachatsky earthquake of 18 June 2013 and a seismic activation of the same name coal strip mine, started several years before the earthquake and still persists today, have been studied using temporal local seismic arrays in the area. It was found experimentally that the seismic process area is closely connected to open workings, and the earthquakes are extend-ed from the working bed to a depth of 4-5 km. Adjacent to the mine depression sedimentary rocks were activated. The technogenic seismic regime is continuous and not stationary: intervals of background seismicity with relatively weak and seldom events are disturbed by bursts of activity with a rise in the magnitude of stronger earthquakes and frequency of occurrence of weak events. The seismic activation may last for 1–3 months. During the last five years, four seismic activations have been recorded, three of which were generated by large earthquakes of 09.02.2012, ML4.3; 04.03.2013, ML3.9; 18.06.2013, ML6.1. The last one was completed by a series of perceptible earthquakes with local magnitude of 3.0–3.5. The focal mechanism of the Bachatsky earthquake is a thrust fault with one of the motion planes corresponding to the anthropogenic impact. The earthquake flow forms a single process in the space with the b-value of the Gutenberg-Richter relationship different from the natural seismicity. The studied induced seismicity does not correspond to the structural regularities of natural seismicity in the Altai-Sayan mountain area. The findings prove that the Bachatsky earthquake and associated activation can be considered as man-made events.


1996 ◽  
Vol 86 (1A) ◽  
pp. 255-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Kedar ◽  
Hiroo Kanamori

Abstract We have developed a method to detect long-period precursors for large earthquakes observed in southern California, if they occur. The method allows us to continuously monitor seismic energy radiation over a wide frequency band to investigate slow deformation in the crust (e.g., slow earthquakes), especially before large earthquakes. We used the long-period records (1 sample/sec) from TERRAscope, a broadband seismic network in southern California. The method consists of dividing the record into a series of overlapping 30-min-long windows, computing the spectra over a frequency band of 0.00055 to 0.1 Hz, and plotting them in the form of a time-frequency diagram called spectrogram. This procedure is repeated daily over a day-long record. We have analyzed the 17 January 1994 Northridge earthquake (Mw = 6.7), and the 28 June 1992 Landers earthquake (Mw = 7.3). No slow precursor with spectral amplitude measured over a duration of 30 min larger than that of a magnitude 3.7 was detected prior to either event. In other words, there was no precursor whose moment was larger than ∼0.003% of the mainshock.


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