Abstract
I present a high-precision earthquake relocation catalog and first-motion focal mechanisms before and during the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence in eastern California. I obtain phase arrivals, first-motion polarities, and waveform data from the Southern California Earthquake Data Center for more than 24,000 earthquakes with the magnitudes varying between −0.7 and 7.1 from 1 January to 31 July 2019. I first relocate all the earthquakes using phase arrivals through a previously developed 3D seismic-velocity model and then improve relative location accuracies using differential times from waveform cross correlation. The majority of the relocated seismicity is distributed above 12 km depth. The seismicity migration along the northwest–southeast direction can be clearly seen with an aseismic zone near the Coso volcanic field. Focal mechanisms are solved for all the relocated events based on the first-motion polarity data with dominant strike-slip fault solutions. The Mw 6.4 and 7.1 earthquakes are positioned at 12.45 and 4.16 km depths after the 3D relocation, respectively, with strike-slip focal solutions. These results can help our understanding of the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence and can be used in other seismological and geophysical studies.
Applying a three-dimensional velocity model, waveform cross correlation, and cluster analysis to locate southern California seismicity from 1981 to 2005