[1] GPS data define a broad zone of present day deformation in the eastern Basin and Range province, western US. Using finite element models with elastic upper crust over viscoelastic lower crust/upper mantle and incorporating earthquake cycle effects, we show that these data are consistent with a model whereby most contemporary fault slip is focused on the Wasatch fault zone. Modeled rates of ...

Earthquake clustering phenomena such as aftershocks, foreshocks, and pairing of mainshocks are prominent and characteristic features of earthquake occurrence. Because the earthquake nucleation process controls the time and place of occurrence of earthquakes, non-linear dependence of nucleation times on stress changes can strongly affect the spatial and temporal patterns of earthquake occurrence...

[1] We report on laboratory experiments which investigate interactions between aseismic slip, stress changes, and seismicity on a critically stressed fault during the nucleation of stick-slip instability. We monitor quasi-static and dynamic changes in local shear stress and fault slip with arrays of gages deployed along a simulated strike-slip fault (2m long and 0.4m deep) in a saw cut sample o...

We deployed a dense linear array of 45 seismometers across and along the San Andreas fault near Parkfield a week after the M 6.0 Parkfield earthquake on 28 September 2004 to record fault-zone seismic waves generated by aftershocks and explosions. Seismic stations and explosions were co-sited with our previous experiment conducted in 2002. The data from repeated shots detonated in the fall of 20...

Excavations in a playa along the 1992 rupture of the Emerson fault reveal evidence of two paleoseismic events, with only one large prehistoric rupture in the past 15 millennia. Accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon ages of charcoal from playa sediments and from faultscarp colluvium directly beneath the playa beds indicate that the last large prehistoric slip event occurred about 9000 ka. Tr...

[1] One of the biggest assumptions, and a source of some of the biggest uncertainties in earthquake hazard estimation is the role of fault segmentation in controlling large earthquake ruptures. Here we apply a new model which produces sequences of elastodynamic earthquake events on complex segmented fault systems, and use these simulations to quantify the variation of large events. We find a nu...

The San Andreas fault is considered to be the primary plate boundary fault in southern California and the most likely fault to produce a major earthquake. I use dynamic rupture modeling to show that the San Jacinto fault is capable of rupturing along with the San Andreas in a single earthquake, and interpret these results along with existing paleoseismic data and historic damage reports to sugg...

Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1 TriMan software package ................................................................................................... 2 The numeric model ......................................................................................................... 3 Inverse m...

The Himalayan mountain range has been the locus of some of the largest continental earthquakes, including the 2015 magnitude 7.8 Gorkha earthquake. Competing hypotheses suggest that Himalayan topography is sustained and plate convergence is accommodated either predominantly on the main plate boundary fault, or more broadly across multiple smaller thrust faults. Here we use geodetic measurements...