As preparation for this Dahlem Workshop on The Dynamics of Fault Zones, specifically on the subtopic “Rheology of Fault Rocks and Their Surroundings,” we addressed critical research issues for understanding the seismic response of fault zones in terms of the constitutive response of fault materials. This requires new concepts and a host of new observations and experiments to document material r...

Faults in complex tectonic environments interact in various ways, including triggered rupture of one fault by another, that may increase seismic hazard in the surrounding region. We model static and dynamic fault interactions between the strike-slip and thrust fault systems in southern California. We find that rupture of the Sierra Madre-Cucamonga thrust fault system is unlikely to trigger rupt...

During the great 3 May 1887 Sonoran earthquake (surface rupture end-to-end length: 101.8 km; MW = 7.5±0.3), an array of three north-south striking Basin and Range Province faults (from north to south Pitáycachi, Teras, and Otates) snapped along the western margin of the Sierra Madre Occidental plateau. My detailed fi eld survey of the Teras fault and the 1887 earthquake rupture zone along this ...

A Mw 7.1 earthquake struck the Eastern Anatolia, near the city of Van (Turkey), on 23 October 2011. We investigated the coseismic surface displacements using the InSAR technique, exploiting adjacent ENVISAT tracks and COSMO-SkyMed images. Multi aperture interferometry was also applied, measuring ground displacements in the azimuth direction. We solved for the fault geometry and mechanism, and w...

a r t i c l e i n f o Recent high-resolution GPS and seismological data reveal that tectonic faults exhibit complex, multi-mode slip behavior including earthquakes, creep events, slow and silent earthquakes, low-frequency events and earthquake afterslip. The physical processes responsible for this range of behavior and the mechanisms that dictate fault slip rate or rupture propagation velocity ...

In this study, joint inversions of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Global Position System (GPS) measurements are used to investigate the source parameters of four Mw > 5 events of the 2016–2017 Central Italy earthquake sequence. The results show that the four events are all associated with a normal fault striking northwest–southeast and dipping southwest. The observations, in all cases, are ...

[1] Radar interferometry (InSAR), field measurements and creepmeters reveal surface slip on multiple faults in the Imperial Valley triggered by the main shock of the 4 April 2010 El Mayor‐Cucapah Mw 7.2 earthquake. Co‐seismic offsets occurred on the San Andreas, Superstition Hills, Imperial, Elmore Ranch, Wienert, Coyote Creek, Elsinore, Yuha, and several minor faults near the town of Ocotillo ...

On 18 May 2009, an Mw 4.6 earthquake occurred beneath Inglewood, California, and was widely felt. Though source mechanism and its location suggest that the Newport–Inglewood fault (NIF) may be involved in generating the earthquake, rupture directivity must be modeled to establish the connection between the fault and the earthquake. We first invert for the event’s source mechanism and depth with...