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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (14 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2016)
The 11 April 2012 M8.6 strike-slip Indian Ocean earthquake (IOE) was followed by an increase in global seismic activity, with three remote M ≥ 6.0 earthquakes within 24 h. We investigate delayed dynamic triggering by systematically examining three offshore regions hosting these events for changes in microseismic activity preceding the IOE, and during the hours between the IOE surface-wave arrival and the triggered-event candidate. The Blanco Fault Zone, USA, and the Tiburõn Fault Zone, Mexico, each host a strike-slip event, and the Michoacán Subduction Zone, Mexico, hosts a reverse event. At these locations we estimate transient Coulomb stresses of ±1-10 kPa during the IOE. Each study area contains a regional seismic network allowing us to examine continuous waveforms at one or more nearby stations. We implement a short-/long-term-average algorithm and template matching to detect events and assess the seismicity with the β-statistic. Our results indicate low-magnitude seismicity in the days prior to the IOE and the occurrence of earthquakes during the surface-wave passage after more than 2 h of transient loading. We find both transtensional tectonic environments respond to the transient stresses with a substantial increase observed in the seismicity rates during the hours after the passage of surface waves. In contrast, seismicity rates remain constant in the subduction zone we investigate during the 14 h delay between the IOE and the large-magnitude earthquake. The seismicity rate increases we observe occur after many hours of dynamic stresses and suggest the long duration of transient loading initiated failure processes leading up to these M ≥ 6.0 events.
    Cover page: Delayed dynamic triggering: Local seismicity leading up to three remote M ≥ 6 aftershocks of the 11 April 2012 M8.6 Indian Ocean earthquake
    • Thesis
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2017)

    Decomposing fault mechanical processes advances our understanding of active fault systems and properties of the lithosphere, thereby increasing the effectiveness of seismic hazard assessment and preventative measures implemented in urban centers. Along plate boundaries earthquakes are inevitable as tectonic forces reshape the Earth’s surface. Earthquakes, faulting, and surface displacements are related systems that require multidisciplinary approaches to characterize deformation in the lithosphere. Modern geodetic instrumentation can resolve displacements to millimeter precision and provide valuable insight into secular deformation in near real-time. The expansion of permanent seismic networks as well as temporary deployments allow unprecedented detection of microseismic events that image fault interfaces and fracture networks in the crust. The research presented in this dissertation is at the intersection of seismology and geodesy to study the Earth’s response to transient deformation and explores research questions focusing on earthquake triggering, induced seismicity, and seasonal loading while utilizing seismic data, geodetic data, and modeling tools. The focus is to quantify stress changes in the crust, explore seismicity rate variations and migration patterns, and model crustal deformation in order to characterize the evolving state of stress on faults and the migration of fluids in the crust. The collection of problems investigated all investigate the question: Why do earthquakes nucleate following a low magnitude stress perturbation? Answers to this question are fundamental to understanding the time dependent failure processes of the lithosphere.

    Dynamic triggering is the interaction of faults and triggering of earthquakes represents stress transferring from one system to another, at both local and remote distances [Freed, 2005]. The passage of teleseismic surface waves from the largest earthquakes produce dynamic stress fields and provides a natural laboratory to explore the causal relationship between low-amplitude stress changes and dynamically triggered events. Interestingly, observations of dynamically triggered M≥5.5 earthquakes are absent in the seismic records [Johnson et al., 2015; Parsons and Velasco, 2011], which invokes questions regarding whether or not large magnitude events can be dynamically triggered. Emerging results in the literature indicate undocumented M≥5.5 events at near to intermediate distances are dynamically triggered during the passage of surface waves but are undetected by automated networks [Fan and Shearer, 2016]. This raises new questions about the amplitude and duration of dynamic stressing for large magnitude events. I used 35-years of global seismicity and find that large event rate increases only occur following a delay from the transient load, suggesting aseismic processes are associated with large magnitude triggered events. To extend this finding I investigated three cases of large magnitude delayed dynamic triggering following the M8.6 2012 Indian Ocean earthquake [Pollitz et al., 2012] by producing microseismicity catalogs and modeling the transient stresses. The results indicate immediate triggering of microseismic events that hours later culminate into a large magnitude event and support the notion that large magnitude events are triggerable by transient loading, but seismic and aseismic processes (e.g. induced creep or fluid mobilization) are contributing to the nucleation process. Open questions remain concerning the source of a nucleation delay period following a stress perturbation that require both geodetic and seismic observations to constrain the source of delayed dynamic triggering and possibly provide insight into a precursory nucleation phase

    Induced seismicity has gained much attention in the past 5 years as earthquake rates in regions of low tectonic strain accumulation accelerate to unprecedented levels [Ellsworth, 2013]. The source of the seismicity is attributed to shallow fluid injection associated with energy production. As hydrocarbon extraction continues to increase in the U.S. the deformation and induced seismicity from wastewater injection is providing new avenues to explore crustal properties. The large magnitude events associated with regions of high rate injection support the notion that the crust is critically stressed. Seismic data in these areas provides the opportunity to delineate fault structures in the crust using precise earthquake locations. To augment the studies of transient loading cycles I investigated induced seismicity at The Geysers geothermal field in northern California. Using high-resolution hypocenter data I implement an epidemic type aftershock sequence (ETAS) model to develop seismicity rate time series in the active geothermal field and characterize the migration of fluids from high volume water injection. Subtle stress changes induced by thermo- and poroelastic strains trigger seismicity for ~5 months after peak injection at depths ~3 km below the main injection interval. This suggests vertical migration paths are maintained in the geothermal field that allows fluid propagation on annual time scales. Fully describing the migration pattern of fluids in the crust and the associated stresses are applicable to tectonic related faulting and triggered seismic activity.

    Seasonal hydrological loading is a source of annual periodic transient deformation that is ideal for investigating the modulation of seismicity. The initial step in exploring the modulation of seismicity is to validate that a significant annual period does exist in California earthquake records. The periodicity results [Dutilleul et al., 2015] motivate continued investigation of seismically active regions that experience significant seasonal mass loading, i.e. high precipitation and snowfall rates, to quantify the magnitude of seasonal stress changes and possible correlation with seismicity modulation. The implication of this research addresses questions concerning the strength and state of stress on faults. High-resolution water storage time series throughout California are developed using continuous GPS records. The results allow an estimation of the stress changes induced by hydrological loading, which is combined with a detailed focal mechanism analysis to characterize the modulation of seismicity. The hydrologic loading is augmented with the contribution of additional deformation sources (e.g. tidal, atmosphere, and temperature) and find that annual stress changes of ~5 kPa are modulating seismicity, most notably on dip-slip structures. These observations suggest that mechanical differences exist between the vertically dipping strike-slip faults and the shallowly dipping oblique structures in California. When comparing all the annual loading cycles it is evident that future studies incorporate all the sources of solid Earth deformation to fully describe the stresses realized on fault systems that respond to seasonal loads.

      Cover page: Stress modulation of earthquakes: A study of long and short period stress perturbations and the crustal response
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2017)
      Stresses in the lithosphere arise from multiple natural loading sources that include both surface and body forces. The largest surface loads include near-surface water storage, snow and ice, atmosphere pressure, ocean loading, and temperature changes. The solid Earth also deforms from celestial body interactions and variations in Earth's rotation. We model the seasonal stress changes in California from 2006 through 2014 for seven different loading sources with annual periods to produce an aggregate stressing history for faults in the study area. Our modeling shows that the annual water loading, atmosphere, temperature, and Earth pole tides are the largest loading sources and should each be evaluated to fully describe seasonal stress changes. In California we find that the hydrological loads are the largest source of seasonal stresses. We explore the seasonal stresses with respect to the background principal stress orientation constrained with regional focal mechanisms and analyze the modulation of seismicity. Our results do not suggest a resolvable seasonal variation for the ambient stress orientation in the shallow crust. When projecting the seasonal stresses into the background stress orientation we find that the timing of microseismicity modestly increases from an ~8 kPa seasonal mean-normal-stress perturbation. The results suggest that faults in California are optimally oriented with the background stress field and respond to subsurface pressure changes, possibly due to processes we have not considered in this study. At any time a population of faults are near failure as evident from earthquakes triggered by these slight seasonal stress perturbations.
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2021)
        We analyze data from 580 continuous global positioning system (GPS) stations in California to quantify differences in published velocity estimates from five analysis centers. Horizontal and vertical rates for individual stations can differ up to 5 mm/yr, with systematic differences in some areas comparable to deformation rates. Published velocity uncertainties vary between analysis centers and are systematically underreported in the horizontal relative to empirical uncertainties calculated from the scatter of analysis center velocities. In the vertical, published velocity uncertainties are both over and underreported and vary more widely between centers. An interpolated ensemble vertical velocity field shows high-subsidence regions in the Central Valley and Salton Trough have the largest empirical uncertainties, while station density has a modest impact on uncertainties. Applications that rely on subcentimeter GPS accuracy should consider the possibility that formal errors published with velocity rate estimates understate true velocity uncertainties in both the horizontal and vertical.
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2017)
          Establishing what controls the timing of earthquakes is fundamental to understanding the nature of the earthquake cycle and critical to determining time-dependent earthquake hazard. Seasonal loading provides a natural laboratory to explore the crustal response to a quantifiable transient force. In California, water storage deforms the crust as snow and water accumulates during the wet winter months. We used 9 years of global positioning system (GPS) vertical deformation time series to constrain models of monthly hydrospheric loading and the resulting stress changes on fault planes of small earthquakes. The seasonal loading analysis reveals earthquakes occurring more frequently during stress conditions that favor earthquake rupture. We infer that California seismicity rates are modestly modulated by natural hydrological loading cycles.
            Cover page: Seasonal water storage, stress modulation, and California seismicity
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2016)
            Seismicity from injected fluids provides insight into the hydraulically conductive fracture network at The Geysers (TG), California, geothermal reservoir. Induced earthquakes at TG result from both thermoelastic and poroelastic stresses as injected fluids cool the rocks and increase pore pressure. The spatiotemporal evolution of M ≥ 1.5 seismicity is characterized as a function of depth in the northwest and southeast regions of TG to develop time-dependent earthquake rates using an epidemic-type aftershock sequence model. The seismicity and injection follow an annual cycle that peaks in the winter months and is correlated by depth. The results indicate a time lag of ≤6 months for fluids to migrate >3 km below the injection depth. Water injection is the main cause of seismicity as fluids penetrate into the reservoir. Our results suggest that a steeply dipping fracture network of hydraulically conductive faults allows fluid migration to a few kilometers below the point of injection.
              Cover page: Depth migration of seasonally induced seismicity at The Geysers geothermal field
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2015)
              Probing the effects of a transient stress on the timing of an earthquake occurrence is necessary for understanding the remote interaction of large-magnitude events. Global catalog data containing 35 years of M ≥ 5.5 earthquakes allow us to explore for periods of enhanced or suppressed seismic activity. We consider 113 M ≥ 7.5 main shocks between 1977 and 2012 and focus on seismic activity on time scales from seconds to days following these main shocks. We search for evidence of dynamic triggering of large-magnitude events similar to the previously observed global increase during the first few days following the 2012 M8.6 Indian Ocean main shock. We restrict the analysis to regions of elevated strain during the passage of surface waves. Using a threshold of 0.1 microstrain (∼3 kPa) and a temporal window of ±1 year, we stack daily seismicity rate curves using the exclusion-zone declustered M ≥ 5.5 catalog events in order to resolve deviations from the background rate. Our results do not indicate a significant change in activity for at least 10 days when considering the collective set of 113 main shocks and subsets at M8.0 and M8.5 thresholds. The results also do not indicate immediate triggering of M ≥ 5.5 events. We do find two instances of increased seismicity in the elevated strain region within 10 days. These increases are subsequent to two main shocks, the 1977 M8.3 and 2012 M8.6, both located in the Indian Ocean. We conclude that a global change in M ≥ 5.5 earthquake rates following a transient stress from distant earthquakes is a rare occurrence.
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2017)
                The temporal evolution of intermediate-depth seismicity before and after the 2011 M9.0 Tohoku-oki earthquake reveals interactions between plate interface slip and deformation in the subducting slab. We investigate seismicity rate changes in the upper and lower planes of the double seismic zone beneath northeast Japan using both a β statistic approach and a temporal epidemic type aftershock sequence model. We do not observe an anomalous precursory increase in intermediate-depth earthquake activity preceding the mainshock; however, following the mainshock, we observe a rate increase for the intermediate-depth earthquakes in the upper plane. The average ratio of upper plane to lower plane activity and the mean deep aseismic slip rate both increased by factor of 2. An increase of downdip compression in the slab resulting from coseismic and postseismic deformation enhanced seismicity in the upper plane, which is dominated by events accommodating downdip shortening from plate unbending.
                  Cover page: Temporal variation of intermediate‐depth earthquakes around the time of the M9.0 Tohoku‐oki earthquake
                  • Article
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2015)
                  Periodic earthquake occurrences may reflect links with semidiurnal to multiyear tides, seasonal hydrological loads, and ∼14 month pole tide forcing. The Schuster spectrum is a recent extension of Schuster's traditional test for periodicity analysis in seismology. We present an alternative approach: the multifrequential periodogram analysis (MFPA), performed on time series of monthly earthquake numbers. We explore if seismicity in two central California regions, the Central San Andreas Fault near Parkfield (CSAF-PKD) and the Sierra Nevada-Eastern California Shear Zone (SN-ECSZ), exhibits periodic behavior at periods of 2 months to several years. Original and declustered catalogs spanning up to 26 years were analyzed with both methods. For CSAF-PKD, the MFPA resolves ∼1 year periodicities, with additional statistically significant periods of ∼6 and ∼4 months; for SN-ECSZ, it finds a strong ∼14 month periodic component. Unlike the Schuster spectrum, the MFPA has an exact modified statistic at non-Fourier frequencies. Informed by the MFPA period estimates, trigonometric models with periods of 12, 6, and 4 months (Model 1) and 14.24 and 12 months (Model 2) were fitted to time series of earthquake numbers. For CSAF-PKD, Model 1 shows a peak annual earthquake occurrence during August-November and a secondary peak in April. Similar peaks, or troughs, are found in annual and semiannual components of pole tide and tide-induced stress model time series and fault normal-stress reduction from seasonal hydrological unloading. For SN-ECSZ, the dominant ∼14 month periodicity prevents regular annual peaking, and Model 2 provides a better fit (Δ R¯adjusted2: 2.4%). This new MFPA application resolves several periodicities in earthquake catalogs that reveal external periodic forcing.
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2018)
                    Earthquake-cycle deformation, which includes earthquake ruptures, interseismic strain, and transient slow slip events, spans spatial scales ranging from fractions of a meter to thousands of kilometers. Similarly, temporal scales range from seconds during an earthquake rupture to thousands of years of strain accumulation between earthquakes. We discuss results regarding the vertical crustal deformation associated with both slow and rapid crustal deformation across a transect of the central Mexican subduction forearc in the Guerrero seismic gap, where the Cocos plate underthrusts the North America plate. This sector of the subduction zone is characterized by a flat-slab geometry with zones of sharp bending-unbending of the slab, irregularly distributed seismicity, and exceptionally large slow slip events. We used the river network, topography, geomorphic features, and morphometry on a transect across the forearc to assess Quaternary crustal deformation. The Papagayo drainage network shows that the forearc has been uplifted since the late Cenozoic (~25 Ma), and that rates of uplift increased since the beginning of the Holocene. Uplift is not homogeneous but shows a trend of increase away from the coast. This vertical deformation is strongly influenced by subduction processes. Thus, the Papagayo River network is strongly controlled by Holocene earthquake cycle processes. This is particularly true for the southern section of the drainage basin, where E-W-striking left-lateral strike-slip faults with a vertical component offset the course of the main river. These faults are accommodating part of the oblique plate convergence at the Mexican subduction zone. We measured the height of a series of terraces and dated quartz extracts by optically stimulated luminescence, and we calculated long-term rates of uplift ranging from 0.5 to 4.9 mm/yr. We discuss associations of forearc topography, faults, and long-term crustal deformation with the Cocos slab geometry, distribution of slow slip events, and earthquake-cycle deformation.
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