Resolving Fine-Scale Heterogeneity of Co-seismic Slip and the Relation to Fault Structure.

ABSTRACT: Fault slip distributions provide important insight into the earthquake process. We analyze high-resolution along-strike co-seismic slip profiles of the 1992 Mw = 7.3 Landers and 1999 Mw = 7.1 Hector Mine earthquakes, finding a spatial correlation between fluctuations of the slip distribution and geometrical fault structure. Using a spectral analysis, we demonstrate that the observed variation of co-seismic slip is neither random nor artificial, but self-affine fractal and rougher for Landers. We show that the wavelength and amplitude of slip variability correlates to the spatial distribution of fault geometrical complexity, explaining why Hector Mine has a smoother slip distribution as it occurred on a geometrically simpler fault system. We propose as a physical explanation that fault comp

SUBMITTER: Milliner CW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4891690 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature