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Correlations of seismicity patterns in Southern California with surface heat flow data

Bogdan Enescu, Sebastian Hainzl and Yehuda Ben-Zion
Correlations of seismicity patterns in Southern California with surface heat flow data
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (December 2009) 99 (6): 3114-3123

Abstract

We investigate the relations between properties of seismicity patterns in southern California and the surface heat flow using a relocated earthquake catalog. We first search for earthquake sequences that are well separated in time and space from other seismicity and then determine the epidemic type aftershock sequence (ETAS) model parameters for the sequences with a sufficient number of events. We focus on the productivity parameter alpha of the ETAS model that quantifies the relative efficiency of an earthquake with magnitude M to produce aftershocks. By stacking sequences with relatively small and relatively large alpha values separately, we observed clear differences between the two groups. Sequences with a smaller alpha have a relatively large number of foreshocks and relatively small number of aftershocks. In contrast, more typical sequences with larger alpha have relatively few foreshocks and larger number of aftershocks. The stacked premainshock activity for the more typical latter sequences has a clear increase in the day before the occurrence of the main event. The spatial distribution of the alpha values correlates well with the surface heat flow: areas of high heat flow are characterized by relatively small alpha , indicating that in such regions the swarm-type earthquake activity is more common. Our results are compatible with a damage rheology model that predicts swarm-type seismic activity in areas with relatively high heat flow and more typical foreshock-mainshock-aftershock sequences in regions with normal or low surface heat flow. The high variability of alpha in regions with either high or low heat flow values indicates that at local scales additional factors (e.g., fluid content and rock type) may influence the seismicity generation process.


ISSN: 0037-1106
EISSN: 1943-3573
Coden: BSSAAP
Serial Title: Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
Serial Volume: 99
Serial Issue: 6
Title: Correlations of seismicity patterns in Southern California with surface heat flow data
Affiliation: GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Federal Republic of Germany
Pages: 3114-3123
Published: 200912
Text Language: English
Publisher: Seismological Society of America, Berkeley, CA, United States
References: 40
Accession Number: 2010-012543
Categories: Seismology
Document Type: Serial
Bibliographic Level: Analytic
Illustration Description: illus. incl. sketch maps
N33°00'00" - N38°00'00", W121°00'00" - W114°00'00"
Secondary Affiliation: University of Southern California, USA, United States
Country of Publication: United States
Secondary Affiliation: GeoRef, Copyright 2017, American Geosciences Institute. Abstract, Copyright, Seismological Society of America. Reference includes data from GeoScienceWorld, Alexandria, VA, United States
Update Code: 201008

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