Source dimensions and stress drops of small earthquakes near Parkfield, California

Source dimensions and stress drops of 30 small Parkfield, California, earthquakes with coda duration magnitudes between 1.2 and 3.9 have been estimated from measurements on short-period velocity-transducer seismograms. Times from the initial onset to the first zero crossing, corrected for attenuation and instrument response, have been interpreted in terms of a circular source model in which rupture expands radially outward from a point until it stops abruptly at radius a. For each earthquake, duration magnitude M_D gave an estimate of seismic moment M_O and M_O and a together gave an estimate of static stress drop.

All 30 earthquakes are located on a 6-km-long segment of the San Andreas fault at a depth range of about 8 to 13 km. Source radius systemically increases with magnitude from about 70 m for events near M_D 1.4 to about 600 m for an event of M_D 3.9. Static stress drop ranges from about 2 to 30 bars and is not strongly correlated with magnitude. Static stress drop does appear to be spatially dependent; the earthquakes with stress drops greater than 20 bars are concentrated in a small region close to the hypocenter of the magnitude $512$ 1966 Parkfield earthquake.