Abstract The U.S. Geological Survey’s geodetic response to the 4–5 July 2019 (Pacific time) Ridgecrest earthquake sequence comprised primarily the installation and/or reoccupation of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) monumentation. Our response focused primarily on the United States’ Navy’s China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station base (NAWSCL). This focus was because much of the surface rupture occurred on the NAWSCL and because of NAWSCL access restrictions only permitting Federal and State of California personnel. In total, we measured or are still measuring at 24 sites, 14 of which were on the NAWSCL and, as of this writing, operational. The majority of sites were set up as continuous stations logging at either 1 sample per second or 1 sample per 15 s. Two stations were recording a 200 m cross-rupture aperture starting ∼10 hr after the M 6.4 event, and they recorded the coseismic displacements of the M 7.1. Approximately, 1 hr after the M 7.1 event, two new stations were recording a ∼200 m cross-rupture aperture of the surface rupture. In the days following, we established the rest of the stations ranging to a distance of ∼15 km from the M 7.1 principal rupture trace. The lack of differential displacement across the M 6.4 rupture during the M 7.1 event suggests that it did not reactivate the M 6.4 plane. The lack of differential cross-fault displacement for both events suggests that rapid shallow afterslip did not occur at those two locations. The postseismic time series from these stations shows centimeters of horizontal displacement over periods of a few months. They record a mixture of fault-parallel and fault-normal displacements that, in conjunction with analysis of more spatially complete Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar displacement fields, suggest that both poroelastic and afterslip phenomena occur along the M 6.4 and 7.1 rupture planes. Using preliminary data from these and other regional stations, we also explore the Ridgecrest sequence’s effect on regional GNSS time series and the differentiation of long-term postseismic motions and secular deformation rates. We find that redefining a common-mode noise filter using different GNSS stations that are assumed to be unaffected by the earthquakes results in small but systematic differences in the regional velocity field estimate.
Abstract Transform faults have anomalously low rates of seismicity, but it’s not clear whether this reflects persistent earthquake-generating fault patches surrounded by creep, or the presence of creep and earthquakes at different times along the same patch. We use new, autonomous underwater vehicle high-resolution seafloor mapping to image the morphology of and offsets along transform fault segments in the Gulf of California, offshore Mexico. Fault zone structure imaged in this study shows evidence for the initiation and cessation of activity along individual fault splays over geologic time. A series of six identically offset depositional fans evidence 21–23 m of slip along the main transform fault, which could not have been produced by a single earthquake given the length of the transform. Rather, the lack of smaller-magnitude offsets indicates synchronous deposition and an absence of multiple slope failure–inducing earthquakes, which is consistent with the idea that creep and/or small-magnitude events occur asynchronously with large earthquakes in the slip history of a given transform fault segment.
Abstract Poor knowledge of how faults slip and distribute deformation in the shallow crust hinders efforts to mitigate hazards where faults increasingly intersect with the expanding global population at Earth’s surface. Here we analyze two study sites along the 2014 M 6.0 South Napa, California, earthquake rupture, each dominated by either co- or post-seismic shallow fault slip. We combine mobile laser scanning (MLS), active-source seismic tomography, and finite element modeling to investigate how deformation rate and mechanical properties of the shallow crust affect fault behavior. Despite four orders-of-magnitude difference in the rupture velocities, MLS-derived shear strain fields are remarkably similar at the two sites and suggest deceleration of the co-seismic rupture near Earth’s surface. Constrained by the MLS and seismic data, finite element models indicate shallow faulting is more sensitive to lithologic layering and plastic yielding than to the presence of fault compliant zones (i.e., regions surrounding faults with reduced stiffness). Although both elastic and elastoplastic models can reproduce the observed surface displacement fields within the uncertainty of MLS data, elastoplastic models likely provide the most reliable representations of subsurface fault behavior, as they produce geologically reasonable stress states and are consistent with field, geodetic, and seismological observations.
ABSTRACT The 2019 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake sequence produced observable crustal deformation over much of central and southern California, as well as surface rupture over several tens of kilometers. To obtain a detailed picture of the fault slip involved in the 4 July M 6.4 foreshock and 6 July M 7.1 mainshock, we combine strong-motion seismic waveforms with crustal deformation observations to obtain kinematic and static slip models of both events. We sample the regional seismic wavefield for both the foreshock and mainshock with three-component records from 31 stations of the California Integrated Seismic Network. The deformation observations include Global Positioning System (GPS), Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), and borehole strainmeter recordings of the dynamic strain field. These data collectively constrain the kinematic coseismic slip distributions of the events, with measurements variously observing coseismic slip from one event (e.g., seismic waveforms, kinematic solutions from continuous GPS, and strainmeter time series) or coseismic slip from both events combined (InSAR). We find that the foreshock ruptured two separate faults, one with left-lateral strike slip on a northeast–southwest-trending fault and the other with right-lateral strike slip on an orthogonal fault, with unilateral rupture propagation along both. The mainshock ruptured a series of northwest–southeast-trending faults with right-lateral strike slip concentrated in the uppermost 6 km with exceptionally low-rupture velocity averaging 1.0–1.5 km/s. A possible explanation for the low-rupture velocity is that the mainshock rupture expended relatively high energy, generating secondary fractures in off-fault deformation, which is consistent with field and seismic evidence of plastic deformation on small fault strands adjacent to the main rupture trace.
