M. J. S. Johnston

Seismicity Remotely Triggered by the Magnitude 7.3 Landers, California, Earthquake

The magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake of 28 June 1992 triggered a remarkably sudden and widespread increase in earthquake activity across much of the western United States. The triggered earthquakes, which occurred at distances up to 1250 kilometers (17 source dimensions) from the Landers mainshock, were confined to areas of persistent seismicity and strike-slip to normal faulting. Many of the triggered areas also are sites of geothermal and recent volcanic activity. Static stress changes calculated for elastic models of the earthquake appear to be too small to have caused the triggering. The most promising explanations involve nonlinear interactions between large dynamic strains accompanying seismic waves from the mainshock and crustal fluids (perhaps including crustal magma).

Implications for prediction and hazard assessment from the 2004 Parkfield earthquake

Obtaining high-quality measurements close to a large earthquake is not easy: one has to be in the right place at the right time with the right instruments. Such a convergence happened, for the first time, when the 28 September 2004 Parkfield, California, earthquake occurred on the San Andreas fault in the middle of a dense network of instruments designed to record it. The resulting data reveal aspects of the earthquake process never before seen. Here we show what these data, when combined with data from earlier Parkfield earthquakes, tell us about earthquake physics and earthquake prediction. The 2004 Parkfield earthquake, with its lack of obvious precursors, demonstrates that reliable short-term earthquake prediction still is not achievable. To reduce the societal impact of earthquakes now, we should focus on developing the next generation of models that can provide better predictions of the strength and location of damaging ground shaking.

Electromagnetic precursors to earthquakes in the Ulf band: A review of observations and mechanisms

Despite over 2 decades of international and national monitoring of electrical signals with the hope of detecting precursors to earthquakes, the scientific community is no closer to understanding why precursors are observed only in some cases. Laboratory measurements have demonstrated conclusively that self potentials develop owing to fluid flow and that both resistivity and magnetization change when rocks are stressed. However, field experiments have had much less success. Many purported observations of low-frequency electrical precursors are much larger than expectations based on laboratory results. In some cases, no precursors occurred prior to earthquakes, or precursory signals were reported with no corresponding coseismic signals. Nonetheless, the field experiments are in approximate agreement with laboratory measurements. Maximum resistivity changes of a few percent have been observed prior to some earthquakes in China, but the mechanism causing those changes is still unknown. Anomalous electric and magnetic fields associated with fluid flow prior to earthquakes may have been observed. Finally, piezomagnetic signals associated with stress release in earthquakes have been documented in measurements of magnetic fields.

Remotely Triggered Seismicity on the United States West Coast following the Mw 7.9 Denali Fault Earthquake

The Mw 7.9 Denali fault earthquake in central Alaska of 3 November 2002 triggered earthquakes across western North America at epicentral distances of up to at least 3660 km. We describe the spatial and temporal development of triggered activity in California and the Pacific Northwest, focusing on Mount Rainier, the Geysers geothermal field, the Long Valley caldera, and the Coso geothermal field. The onset of triggered seismicity at each of these areas began during the Love and Raleigh waves of the Mw 7.9 wave train, which had dominant periods of 15 to 40 sec, indicating that earthquakes were triggered locally by dynamic stress changes due to low-frequency surface wave arrivals. Swarms during the wave train continued for 4 min (Mount Rainier) to 40 min (the Geysers) after the surface wave arrivals and were characterized by spasmodic bursts of small (M 2.5) earthquakes. Dy- namic stresses within the surface wave train at the time of the first triggered earth- quakes ranged from 0.01 MPa (Coso) to 0.09 MPa (Mount Rainier). In addition to the swarms that began during the surface wave arrivals, Long Valley caldera and Mount Rainier experienced unusually large seismic swarms hours to days after the Denali fault earthquake. These swarms seem to represent a delayed response to the Denali fault earthquake. The occurrence of spatially and temporally distinct swarms of triggered seismicity at the same site suggests that earthquakes may be triggered by more than one physical process.

Absence of earthquake correlation with Earth tides: An indication of high preseismic fault stress rate

Because the rate of stress change from the Earth tides exceeds that from tectonic stress accumulation, tidal triggering of earthquakes would be expected if the final hours of loading of the fault were at the tectonic rate and if rupture began soon after the achievement of a critical stress level. We analyze the tidal stresses and stress rates on the fault planes and at the times of 13,042 earthquakes which are so close to the San Andreas and Calaveras faults in California that we may take the fault plane to be known. We find that the stresses and stress rates from Earth tides at the times of earthquakes are distributed in the same way as tidal stresses and stress rates at random times. While the rate of earthquakes when the tidal stress promotes failure is 2% higher than when the stress does not, this difference in rate is not statistically significant. This lack of tidal triggering implies that preseismic stress rates in the nucleation zones of earthquakes are at least 0.15 bar/h just preceding seismic failure, much above the long-term tectonic stress rate of 10−4 bar/h.

Response of Long Valley Caldera to the Mw = 7.3 Landers, California, Earthquake

Of the many sites in the western United States responding to the June 28, 1992, Landers earthquake (M w = 7.3) with remotely triggered seismicity, only Long Valley caldera is monitored by both seismic and continuous deformation networks. A transient strain pulse and surge in seismicity recorded by these networks began within tens of seconds following arrival of the shear pulse from Landers. The cumulative strain and number of triggered earthquakes followed the same exponentially decaying growth rate (time constant 1.8 days) during the first 6 days following Landers. The strain transient, which was recorded on a borehole dilatometer at the west margin of the caldera and a long-base tiltmeter 20 km to the east, peaked on the sixth day at =0.25 ppm and gradually decayed over the next 15-20 days. The absence of a clear strain signal exceeding 0.4 ppm in data from the two-color geodimeter deformation lines, which span the central section of the caldera, indicates that the strain transient cannot be due solely to pressure changes in the concentrated pressure source 7 km beneath the central part of the caldera that accounts for most of the uplift of the resurgent dome since 1980. The triggered seismicity occupied the entire seismogenic volume beneath the caldera. The focal mechanisms, the frequency-magnitude distribution, and the spatial distribution of the triggered earthquakes are typical of other swarms in Long Valley caldera. The cumulative seismic moment of the triggered earthquakes through the first 2 weeks after the Landers earthquake corresponds to a single M = 3.8 earthquake, which is too small by nearly 2 orders of magnitude to account for the 0.25-ppm peak amplitude of the observed strain transients. Evidently, the strain transient represents the dominant response mode, which precludes direct triggering of local earthquakes by the large dynamic stresses from Landers as the dominant process. Conditionally viable models for the triggering process beneath the caldera include (1) the transient pressurization of magma bodies beneath the resurgent dome and Mammoth Mountain by the advective overpressure of rising bubbles, (2) a surge in fluid pressure within the seismogenic zone due to upward cascading failure of isolated compartments containing superhydrostatic pore fluids, (3) relaxation (fluidization) of a partially crystallized magma body or dike intrusion in the deep crustal roots of Long Valley magmatic system, or (4) aseismic slip on midcrustal faults. Either the deep, relaxing-magma body or lower crustal dike intrusion satisfy all the strain observations with a single deformation source. The latter model admits the possibility that large, regional earthquakes can trigger the episodic recharge of the deep roots of crustal magmatic systems.

Fault failure with moderate earthquakes

Abstract High resolution strain and tilt recordings were made in the near-field of, and prior to, the May 1983 Coalinga earthquake (ML = 6.7, Δ = 51 km), the August 4, 1985, Kettleman Hills earthquake (ML = 5.5, Δ = 34 km), the April 1984 Morgan Hill earthquake (ML = 6.1, Δ = 55 km), the November 1984 Round Valley earthquake (ML = 5.8, Δ = 54 km), the January 14, 1978, Izu, Japan earthquake (ML = 7.0, Δ = 28 km), and several other smaller magnitude earthquakes. These recordings were made with near-surface instruments (resolution 10−8), with borehole dilatometers (resolution 10−10) and a 3-component borehole strainmeter (resolution 10−9). While observed coseismic offsets are generally in good agreement with expectations from elastic dislocation theory, and while post-seismic deformation continued, in some cases, with a moment comparable to that of the main shock, preseismic strain or tilt perturbations from hours to seconds (or less) before the main shock are not apparent above the present resolution. Precursory slip for these events, if any occurred, must have had a moment less than a few percent of that of the main event. To the extent that these records reflect general fault behavior, the strong constraint on the size and amount of slip triggering major rupture makes prediction of the onset times and final magnitudes of the rupture zones a difficult task unless the instruments are fortuitously installed near the rupture initiation point. These data are best explained by an inhomogeneous failure model for which various areas of the fault plane have either different stress-slip constitutive laws or spatially varying constitutive parameters. Other work on seismic waveform analysis and synthetic waveforms indicates that the rupturing process is inhomogeneous and controlled by points of higher strength. These models indicate that rupture initiation occurs at smaller regions of higher strength which, when broken, allow runaway catastrophic failure.

Continuous Borehole Strain and Pore Pressure in the Near Field of the 28 September 2004 M 6.0 Parkfield, California, Earthquake: Implications for Nucleation, Fault Response, Earthquake Prediction, and Tremor

Near-field observations of high-precision borehole strain and pore pres- sure, show no indication of coherent accelerating strain or pore pressure during the weeks to seconds before the 28 September 2004 M 6.0 Parkfield earthquake. Minor changes in strain rate did occur at a few sites during the last 24 hr before the earth- quake but these changes are neither significant nor have the form expected for strain during slip coalescence initiating fault failure. Seconds before the event, strain is stable at the 10 � 11 level. Final prerupture nucleation slip in the hypocentral region is constrained to have a moment less than 2 � 10 12 Nm( M 2.2) and a source size less than 30 m. Ground displacement data indicate similar constraints. Localized rupture nucleation and runaway precludes useful prediction of damaging earthquakes. Coseismic dynamic strains of about 10 microstrain peak-to-peak were superimposed on volumetric strain offsets of about 0.5 microstrain to the northwest of the epicenter and about 0.2 microstrain to the southeast of the epicenter, consistent with right lateral slip. Observed strain and Global Positioning System (GPS) offsets can be simply fit with 20 cm of slip between 4 and 10 km on a 20-km segment of the fault north of Gold Hill (M 0 � 7 � 10 17 N m). Variable slip inversion models using GPS data and seismic data indicate similar moments. Observed postseismic strain is 60% to 300% of the coseismic strain, indicating incomplete release of accumulated strain. No measurable change in fault zone compliance preceding or following the earthquake is indicated by stable earth tidal response. No indications of strain change accompany nonvolcanic tremor events reported prior to and following the earthquake.

The 1987 Whittier Narrows Earthquake in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, California

The Whittier Narrows earthquake sequence (local magnitude, ML = 5.9), which caused over

Review of magnetic and electric field effects near active faults and volcanoes in the U.S.A.

358-million damage, indicates that assessments of earthquake hazards in the Los Angeles metropolitan area may be underestimated. The sequence ruptured a previously unidentified thrust fault that may be part of a large system of thrust faults that extends across the entire east-west length of the northern margin of the Los Angeles basin. Peak horizontal accelerations from the main shock, which were measured at ground level and in structures, were as high as 0.6g (where g is the acceleration of gravity at sea level) within 50 kilometers of the epicenter. The distribution of the modified Mercalli intensity VII reflects a broad north-south elongated zone of damage that is approximately centered on the main shock epicenter.