Environmental triggering of seismicity in California

Bruce Zhou, Ilya Zaliapin, Christopher W. Johnson, Yuning Fu, Kristel Chanard, & Yehuda Ben-Zion

Published July 26, 2020, SCEC Contribution #10208, 2020 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #054

Exploring the potential triggering of earthquakes by environmental forcing terms, such as water mass loading and surface temperature changes, contributes to the understanding of crustal mechanics and dynamics of seismicity. The various geological and geomorphic settings in California provide the opportunity to perform a comparative study of nontectonic modulation of seismicity under different conditions. Here we use 14 years of water storage changes estimated from global positioning system (GPS) vertical elastic loading deformation time series, water levels in aquifers, and a declustered version of the ANSS Comprehensive Earthquake Catalog (ComCat) to analyze correlations between background seismicity rate variations and different possible forcing terms in various sub regions in California. Preliminary results show a variety of correlations that suggest different possible dominant forcing terms in different locations. Significant detected correlations will be modeled with poroelastic and thermoelastic frameworks.

Citation
Zhou, B., Zaliapin, I., Johnson, C. W., Fu, Y., Chanard, K., & Ben-Zion, Y. (2020, 07). Environmental triggering of seismicity in California . Poster Presentation at 2020 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Seismology